A Leap of Logic
The latest edition of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s regular paper Solidarity has a number of interesting articles in it, not least an interview with Daniel Bensaid of the French New Anti-Capitalist Party which throws a different light on some of the failed left-of-labour projects in the UK. However I want to talk about a rather more eccentric item, which is an “open letter” to Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian.
Recently the Graun ran an editorial called “Language and History”. It’s a short piece (as editorials are) which is clearly intended to draw attention to the dangers of allowing legitimate anger over the shocking treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state, to descend into anti-semitism. Its final lines, with which I entirely agree, read thus:
It is chilling to see “kill Arabs” graffitied on homes in Gaza. But the style in which that is condemned must not create the climate that allows scrawling “kill Jews” on synagogues in Manchester. For that is what is at stake: what might merely be insensitivity can, cumulatively, erode the conditions that foster racial tolerance. For they depend not only on the laws, but on a respect for all people’s sensitivities.
This strikes me as eminently fair comment. Sure, it doesn’t cover all the bases, but as the parting short from a short opinion piece in a daily paper, I can’t really see the problem with it. However, the AWL appear to disagree with me.
Rather than calling (as the Guardian does) for critics of Israel to be mindful of the ease with which criticism of that state can slide into anti-semitism, the AWL’s starting premise is that opposition to the Israeli state’s legitimacy – the “one state” position, to revisit a hoary old Trot debate – is at the very base of contemportary anti-semitism:
Mr Rusbridger, the core and root of modern anti-Semitism is the denial of Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. That inexorably leads on to a radical political hostility to most Jews alive.
Note the use of language here. I can’t really think of the circumstances in which the AWL would frame a debate about almost any other nation in these terms, nor indeed any other circumstances in which they would see a state as so bound up with a culture or ethnicity. If Turkey were to invade Armenia, my gut starting point would be to oppose the invasion (just as it would be in the highly unlikely event that Syria or Iran were to attack Israel), but would I call it “racist” against Armenians under all circumstances? No. Similarly I think it is bending the stick to breaking point for the AWL to claim that a position on Israel-Palestine with which they (and I) happen to disagree is “the root” of modern anti-semitism. It clearly isnt: the “root” of modern anti-semitism is that same ages-old fear of difference which has festered underneath Western cultures since time immemorial, and of which Jews have become the victims throughout history. It is also rooted in latter-day fascist conspiracy theories about the world being run by Jewish conspiracies, which have gone on to infest the Arab world in particular. All of these points would require far more than the space available here in order in order to be done justice. However the idea that if someone advocates a “one state” solution for Israel-Palestine then they are a de facto anti-semite, is surely offensive nonsense.
In the course of the article, the AWL make the point that most Jewish people alive today have at least some kind of identification or sympathy with Israel, however critical they might be of a given government. I think this is almost certainly true. Indeed, let me just repeat that my own disagreement with the AWL is not based on opposition to a two state solution, which I myself support. However again, I do not think it automatically follows that just because most people of a given ethnicity think something, that it is therefore racist to disagree with them. I have no idea for instance how many Arabs believed the pernicious lie initially put about by Al-Manar TV, that 4,000 Jews did not go to work on 9/11. But what if it’s a majority? Is it then anti-Arab racism to disagree? I’m not trying to draw any kind of moral equation between the two examples used but surely this shows that there is something of a hole in the AWL’s logic.
It is certainly true that the climate on many of the demonstrations around Israel in the past few years has not been a comfortable one. I myself was disgusted by a 2006 demo around the invasion of Lebanon which was dominated by Hassan Nasrallah placards and chants of “We are all Hezbollah”. The “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude taken by much of the left to unrepresentative groups of questionable provenance such as the Muslim Association of Britain, or to the political allegiances of individuals such as Azzam Tamimi, which is doubtless a product of a collapse of faith in the left’s own ability to reach young people, is symptomatic of the problems of the mainstream “anti-war movement” in the UK. Furthermore it is beyond doubt that there have been overt anti-semites involved in those demonstrations, at least at the level of participation. Even beyond that, the strange iconography of the demonstrations which seeks to remove the Holocaust from its historical context and apply it to the Palestinian experience, speaks to a questioning of the legitimacy of Jewish experiences that would not be applied to any other ethnic group. All of that is true, and all of it should be firmly denounced.
However, is it rooted in one state positions on Palestine? I fail to see how it necessarily is. The AWL has fallen into the logic that certain of its members so skilfully debunk in others – one which is itself rooted in conspiracy theory, whereby one takes one’s pre-determined conclusion (“the left is anti-semitic”), and then picks through threads of events in order to justify that conclusion. All of the problems with anti-war activism in the UK listed above are true in my view, and all of them are a cause for serious concern. However none of them actually prove that an objection to a particular state’s “right to exist and defend itself” (since when did states, any states, have concrete “rights”?) is at the root of a modern form of racism.
Take a step back and a deep breath, comrades. Many of your criticisms hold water, but don’t draw all-encompassing narrative conclusions on the basis of legitimate concerns.
johng said,
February 15, 2009 at 4:33 pm
“We are all mau mau now”
Discuss.
voltairespriest said,
February 15, 2009 at 6:06 pm
“We are all the Khmer Rouge now”
Discuss.
It was a shit slogan, John, designed for apolitical, cynical gain, and I think you know it.
johng said,
February 15, 2009 at 6:11 pm
No I don’t. It was a response to the Israeli’s justifying the bombing of civilians by claiming they were all Hezbollah. There was a similar response in Beirut itself were vast numbers of people organised marches to southern Lebanon, risking Israeli bombing, in defiance of their murderous campaign, without neccessarily supporting the politics of Hezbollah. The Khmer Rouge really doesn’t work as a parallel. The mau mau is a much better one. Would you be similarly disgusted by people chanting ‘we are all mau mau now’ after the campaign of repression launched by the British?
voltairespriest said,
February 15, 2009 at 6:23 pm
It wouldn’t be my choice of slogan, no. That’s because, regardless of whether or not I consider Israel’s act of aggression in Lebanon (or Britain’s against the Mau Mau) to be naked imperialism, it doesn’t mean that I actively endorse any reactionary movement’s own politics. And the Khmer Rouge analogy does work, albeit that it’s inconvenient for you – surely on the same basis you would have been marching around with a Pol Pot placard after the Vietnamese invasion? Or perhaps stomping around Hyde Park yelling “We are all UIC” after the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia?
Either way, my central point is not about that at all. Rather it’s to say that people who hold the view that I imagine you do about the solution to the Israel-Palestine tragedy, are not automatically practising anti-semitism. One presumes we agree about that much?
hey said,
February 15, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Since when did the swp march around with nasrallah placards chanting “we are all hezbollah now”, it’s a fucking myth.
voltairespriest said,
February 15, 2009 at 7:47 pm
John seems to be defending the slogan. Why’s that?
hey said,
February 15, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I would defend others using it, but the SWP has never used such a slogan
Voltaire's Priest said,
February 15, 2009 at 8:04 pm
You’re seriously trying to tell me that there were no SWP members on that 2006 demo either carrying those placards or chanting that slogan?
Voltaire's Priest said,
February 15, 2009 at 8:10 pm
From Communist Students… Oooh
The fact that a popular chant was not ‘We are all Hamas’ (it was the Socialist Workers Party which had led the chanting of ‘We are all Hezbollah’ at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006), but ‘We are all Palestinians’, was positive. This was a slogan that expressed solidarity, not with some reactionary grouping, but with an oppressed people.
…aaaah…
Though Weyman Bennett of the SWP’s central committee was heard demanding that Israeli Jews “should go back to where they came from … New York or wherever”.
…. Hezbollah.
hey said,
February 15, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I know of no SWP members who chanted that slogan, and definatley none that lead it, there was not a directive or a promotion from the CC either, if any SWP members did, they were mistaken, obviously. Are you trying to paint the entire SWP, including the leadership, with guilt by association?
Unbelivably that rumour concerning Weyman is still been circulated by the CPGB, it’s probably best not to continue it. If you can be bothered find the article on Socialist Unity where Dave Isaccson started it, it was answered very quickly by several members of leading Renewal who debunked it.
hey said,
February 15, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Anyway this is a little off topic
Waterloo Sunset said,
February 15, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Hey:
From Lenin’s Tomb:
You might hear in one of those videos people chanting “Ooh aah Hezbollah, say ooh aah Hezbollah!” Or “We are all Hezbollah!” Things like that. It was a real pleasure to hear thousands of people yelling that outside the American Embassy.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/07/israel-kills-more-in-lebanon-media.html
That would certainly imply a high level of support for the slogan among some prominent SWP members, no?
And I read the thread in question about that particular allegation I think- do you mean this one- http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3348. If so, it was actually Dave Rosenberg, as an eyewitness. (Original post) Someone calling themselves “Proportionality” also says they heard it and they don’t seem that hostile to the SWP in general (comment 62). Dave Isaccson said he heard it and he seems to be the one who originally named Bennet as the person responsible (comment 119 & 120). Mark P didn’t hear the slogan but he knows who was on the microphone. (comment 163)
And it’s true that some leading members of RR said it wasn’t Bennett, but that it was a different member of the SWP. See Kevin Ovenden (comment 126).
So debunked? Not really. It looks like Dave Isaccson was wrong about who it was (and I unreserverdly apologise for repeating the allegation against Bennett previously on here), but nobody who was there has actually seriously challenged the idea it was an SWP member. Are you categorically denying that?
Volty:
Good post. On top of the factors you mention, I do think there’s also an element of the AWL feeling the need to set out their political differences from what they describe as the ‘kitsch’ left at every opportunity. I’m not saying those differences aren’t there, but I think it sometimes leads to them going off half-cocked in cases like this. So they also sometimes start with how they differ and write articles around that, in my view.
hey said,
February 15, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Yes debunked, it wasn’t Weyman Bennett. That was what I was referring to. This is an internal matter for the SWP, as it was an individual member, not the organisation as a whole.
As for the slogan, why shouldn’t people chant it? It has more to do with opposition to the Israeli state’s portrayal of Lebanese people as Hezbollah militants. Like it or not, many people identify with Hezbollah because they fought Israeli oppression, socialists and the left need to argue for an alternative with these people, not brand them reactionaries, homophobes, women haters, fascists or whatever.
Voltaire's Priest said,
February 15, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Are Hezbollah pro-gay, pro-women’s rights, progressives etc then, in your view?
I didn’t chant it because I’m not Hezbollah. I presume you’re not either, going back to the topic.
Workers’ Liberty on understatement in The Guardian « Greens Engage said,
February 15, 2009 at 11:21 pm
[...] – see also Shiraz Socialist, another place on the left which fights antisemitism. Shiraz’s reading of the letter is that [...]
voltairespriest said,
February 15, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I think Waterloo’s point is a good one – the AWL have over-egged the pudding a lot here. There’s no doubt that there are very creepy undertones to some of what’s said and done in the name of “broad” anti-war coalition building in the UK, and I don’t think he or I would deny that. However it doesn’t follow from there, that an inexorable logic applies whereby everyone who does not support the “right to exist and defend itself” of Israel (presumably everyone in the world who takes that view, if it’s the “core of modern anti-semitism) is – wittingly or not – adhering to an anti-semitic doctrine.
Matt said,
February 16, 2009 at 5:50 am
“If Turkey were to invade Armenia, my gut starting point would be to oppose the invasion ”
But how would you feel if people argued for a one-state solution with Turkey and Armenia? Or if people argued that Turkey (and just Turkey) ought not to exist?
You make some fine points here, but there are good reasons why a lot of people see a lot of criticism of Israel as targetted at its existence. And it’s important to see why that’s often highlighted by many Jews who do take it as threatening. But instead you kind of just duck the issue.
voltairespriest said,
February 16, 2009 at 7:52 am
Like I say Matt, I’d obviously be against it. However, I don’t think it’s “ducking the issue” to point out the obvious kindergarten logic that it doesn’t necessarily therefore follow from such an action that everyone who supports it is holding up “the core of modern Armenophobia”, ie holding up a central plank of a all-encompassing racist ideology. Similarly I don’t believe that any state, in and of itself, has “rights”, whether that’s Israel, the USA, the UK, Russia, China or anywhere else.
I think to be honest that I’ve made myself perfectly clear.
johng said,
February 16, 2009 at 8:39 am
Incidently it was established on some thread that it wasn’t Weyman Bennet. And it hasn’t been established that anyone said it. I was wandering around shivering with cold in speakers corner and heard a lot of slogans. I didn’t once hear anything like that being shouted. I was there for an hour and the surprisingly cold resistant SW sellers didn’t stop shouting all that time. For myself I used SW to keep the cold out and quietly turned blue.
Voltaire suggests that we must never show solidarity with a ‘reactionary grouping’. I would not have described the mau mau as a ‘reactionary grouping’ despite aspects of the mau mau’s politics being reactionary. I would say exactly the same about Hezbollah. This is an organisation which has its roots in religious reform organisations in Lebanon in the 1960s. Influenced by the Iranian revolution it became associated with resistance to the Israeli’s before becoming widely accepted as the ‘national resistance’ across sectarian and political divides. Lebanon was a cockpit for regional tensions between the western powers and arab nationalism in the post-war period. Arab nationalism atrophied but the wests desire to re-structure regional politics continued. Israel also had an interest in re-structuring the internal politics of neighbouring countries and has in the case of Lebanon used military force to do so. Hezbollah have in turn been shaped by these conflicts. The attempt to abstract from all this and describe Hezbollah simply as a ‘reactionary grouping’ is not only analytically silly and ignorent, its also very much of a piece with the propaganda of one side in the conflict, who wish to deny both to Lebanese and to Palestinian people, their right to select their own government, and who equate the fight for democracy with the success of western powers in re-structuring the internal politics of the region. The fight for democracy and western foreign policy are in fact opposed to each other. No kind of democrat can support these efforts.
Yes Voltaire I do agree that it is ludicrous to imagine that the demand for equality for Palestinains is motivated by anti-semitism (but then who genuinely believes this anyway?), and it is of course equally silly to imagine that those who differ and think a two state solution is possible are motivated by wishing to deny the Palestinians equality. In any case this entire method of argument is fairly typical of those who wish to deny any political voice at all to their opponents.
Incidently if Max Dunbar is here he might like to respond to this:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/02/ye-of-bad-faith.html
johng said,
February 16, 2009 at 10:19 am
Just to add. There is a kind of Brechtian logic to much contemporary discussion of the decline of secular nationalism in the Middle East. Leaving aside those who see modern Arab nationalism as a pathology, many seem to see the failure of Arab Nationalism as a failure of the people to be sufficiantly modern and non-medieval, rather then a failure of Arab Nationalism per se. In other words whats needed is an entirely new population. Its this line of argument which leads to the view that the central problem in the region is Islam and the failure of people to properly understand secularism. Thus the French in Algeria desperately saught to persuade the world that their brutal counter-insurgency was a fight for western civilization and secularism (Horne’s book on that conflict, ‘A savage war of Peace’ which title surely contains some resonance in an era and a region charecterised by endless wars and endless peace processes was interestingly a favourite of Ariel Sharon’s around the time of the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza), and recycled old themes about ‘Islam’ being a threat to the same (Winston Churchill had suggested that the war with Mahdi in Sudan was part of a battle to prevent an armada of Islamist militants sailing up the Thames: I seem to remember our Jim Denham triumphantly declaring that it was in fact part of the global civilizing process against slavery). There is thus a long history bound up with both formal and informal empire of a language which attempts to depict conflict in the region as one between ‘western values’ and ‘medieval islam’. It was the official ideology of a number of colonial wars stretching right back to Napoleon. It was a way of stigmatising both popular movements and arab nationalism itself by existing colonial powers and later, by those powers concerned to thwart political opposition to the kind of regional order desired by the great powers. Its not a useful set of analytical tools for socialists, but it has been a very handy tool for those who want to justify contemporary military expeditions in the region, or on the other hand, to deny self determination to oppressed peoples.
Dr Paul said,
February 16, 2009 at 12:25 pm
This post makes a very sound point: the AWL’s idea that monostatists — those who want to see a democratic secular solution to Israel/Palestine, one which provides full and equal national and religious rights to all its inhabitants, Jewish and Arab — are closet anti-Semites is dangerous nonsense.
I’ve responded to Jim D of this site on this topic elsewhere. I make the claim that insisting upon a duostatal solution actually raises the danger of continuing the siege mentality in Israel, which only favours the Israeli right and ultra-right, and lays the basis for the expulsion of the Arab minority in Israel.
And I’d add here that far from reducing anti-Semitism in the Arab world and beyond, the continuance of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as a state of all its inhabitants (as liberal democracies theoretically are), with the institutional discrimination this produces, reinforces anti-Jewish attitudes.
Having said that, I and my friends in the café on Saturday read the latest Socialist Worker with amazement: ‘… Hamas, an organisation dedicated to defending the right of Palestinians to exist.’ And that’s all it says in this article, nothing about its institutional anti-Semitism or its extreme Islamicist politics, it’s just some anodyne set-up, like your local community group. That it is a dead-end for the Palestinians needs to be said, not least that its statements in respect of Jews play into the hands of the Israeli state, and corrupt and muddy the Palestinians’ justified struggle for justice.
The SWP has fallen victim to the vicarious Third Worldism that it once criticised other left groups for promoting. Having been burned by hobnobbing with dodgy elements in Respect, and having demoted the main proponents in its leadership of this orientation, it is odd that it continues with this nonsense.
Quotemined « Max Dunbar said,
February 16, 2009 at 12:31 pm
[...] (Thanks to JohnG in the Shiraz comments) [...]
Matt said,
February 17, 2009 at 3:19 am
“Like I say Matt, I’d obviously be against it [a one-state solution to the hypothetical Turkish/Armenian conflict]”
But I don’t think you’d merely be against it. I think you’d find it bizarre. I’d find it remarkably bizarre, and I think it’s generosity to assume you’d find it bizarre. But your response doesn’t suggest that, and so elides over one of the many ways the Israeli/Palestinians situation is treated differently from other conflicts. Eliding that difference, I think, contains a much more serious difficulty – the inability to account for the ways in which most Jews understand such discourses. Jews and non-Jews (by and large, in general, in the aggregate) interpret many statements as more than mere criticism of Israel. It needs to be said, they interprest such statements as more because they are more than mere criticism of policy – a one-state solution is not a criticism of policy but a criticism of existence. But rather than engage with the extremes that populate criticism of Israel, you talk about delimited criticism of Israel. That’s ducking the question that a lot of people have an obvious interest in.
By describing it as “a hoary old Trot debate,” you erase the Jewish voice in the present. Jews are still, clearly, obviously, concerned with this. With the issue of Israel’s existence. To ignore that is a grave mistake.
voltairespriest said,
February 17, 2009 at 7:34 am
Matt I do wish you’d stop claiming that I’m “avoiding” an issue simply because I don’t agree with you about it. Israel-Palestine is looked at differently from Turkey and Armenia because, to be honest, the situation is different. In out hypothetical situation you’d be talking about a straightforward invasion of one pre-existing state by another, which is not what happened with the creation of Israel less than a century ago.
I myself support a two-state solution as I say, but nevertheless I don’t see how supporting a bi-national state of Palestine populated by both its current inhabitants and the descendents of those they formally displaced in 1948, could reasonably be called an act of anti-semitism. For that matter, you haven’t come up with a reason either, as yet, other than claiming “it is because ‘most Jews’ say it is”. Whether the claim about ‘most Jews’ is correct or not, that isn’t an answer.
resistor said,
February 17, 2009 at 11:46 am
Does this make Martin Buber an anti-Semite?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber
or nearly 20% of Israeli Jews? See Q5
http://www.jmcc.org/publicpoll/results/2000/no39b.htm#results
Ed said,
February 17, 2009 at 3:56 pm
A binational state, a la Martin Buber, is not really the same thing as a single state.
On one level, obviously a single state – whether in some formula allowing autonomy for national groups, or abolishing nations altogether – is what anybody who isn’t some kind of nationalist would want. And not only in Israel/Palestine (certainly not *especially* in Israel/Palestine).
The question is whether it is remotely realistic as an immediate perspective, or whether it is much more likely to become possible after the existing national conflict has been resolved.
Matt said,
February 17, 2009 at 5:08 pm
“I do wish you’d stop claiming that I’m “avoiding” an issue simply because I don’t agree with you about it.”
But it’s not merely a matter of disagreeing about it. It’s about conflating disagreement with the existence of Israel with disagreement with the policies of Israel. In response to a critique of “the denial of Israel’s right to exist” you write “If Turkey were to invade Armenia” as an analogy to Gaza.
The AWL write: “the demonstrations were entirely dominated by placards equating the Star of David and the Nazi swastika, Israel with South Africa, Gaza with the Nazi mass murder of Jews, or chants about a “Palestine” stretching “from the river to the sea”.
“All the platform speakers, in their varying notes, tones annd degrees, proclaimed the same sort of politics. The one-time British diplomat Craig Murray explicitly called for the abolition of Israel and the rolling-back of Middle East history to before 1948. An SWP organiser on the megaphone at one of the marches was shouting that Israeli Jews should “go back to New York”.”
To talk about a different sort of criticism of Israel (merely, opposition to the War in Gaza) simply doesn’t address the concerns expressed by the AWL.It is important to recognize why many Jews feel a need for Israel and to communicate that sympathy. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Israel as a solution for the oppression of Jews, the failure to sympathize with the feelings that underlie that belief is a real problem. (I have seen plenty of anti-Zionists who are genuinely able to communicate sympathy for Zionists, btw. It’s not actually that hard.) Israel’s existence is still important to many of us – that’s something that has to be understood. Yes, it’s as much a matter of tone and style as content, but tone and style DO matter.
The biggest flaw of the Guardian piece is that it allows antagonism toward those Jews for whom Israel’s existence is meaningful. They write, “To present all Jewish people as conterminous with Israel and its supporters is a mistake with potentially terrible consequences. It aligns ethnicity with a political perspective, and it is simply racist.” The only out then is to not be one of Israel’s supporters. Israel’s “supporters” (who support what? existence or policy?) are still on the hook. That’s easily justification to hate most Jews and to intimidate Jews with McCarthyite loyalty tests. That’s in contrast to the editorials best moment, “For [the conditions that foster racial tolerance] depend not only on the laws, but on a respect for all people’s sensitivities.” That moment, however, is hardly central to the editorial, which the AWL is right to say is “so shot through with understatement that it seriously misrepresents the state of things.” All of these articles and posts should centrally be about “a respect for all people’s sensitivities.”
You come closest to addressing the real concerns of many Jews when you say, “However again, I do not think it automatically follows that just because most people of a given ethnicity think something, that it is therefore racist to disagree with them.” Aside from being pro-forma, this is simplistic. I wouldn’t argue that it’s necessary to agree or racist to disagree, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t obligations that derive from disagreement with an oppressed group with a relatively united view on their own oppression. They AWL is a little unclear on how much agreement or sympathy is required, but I think they are close to my view when they write, “How could a people [Jews] with their history not have such attitudes?”
Of course, as for the core or root of antisemitism, there’s still a lot of debate about that. It isn’t really well theorized. I do think you’re quite wrong to describe it as “same ages-old fear of difference,” which erases all its features. The call to “go back to New York” certainly recalls the calls to “go back to Palestine” from fin-de-siecle Europe (and the various purges throughout history), predating the rise of conspiracism to it’s honored place in modern antisemitism. Some scholars have argued, btw, that we’re not now dealing with “modern antisemitism” but a “new Judeophobia” that harkens back to older forms of Jew-hatred. And the idea of a secular one-state solution does, for me, certainly echo the French Enlightenment quote (as best I recall), “To the Jews as individuals we will give everything, but to the Jews as a community nothing.” That was a view that was deeply imbricated with antisemitism, and I honestly don’t know if the modern echo is of a kind. So the AWL does, I think, have a point that you too easily dismiss.
At the same time, as I said, I do think you make a few fine points. But I wish you’d engage more directly with the AWL’s point rather than in a brief, de-emphasized, and simplified moment. You write, “I can’t really think of the circumstances in which the AWL would frame a debate about almost any other nation in these terms, nor indeed any other circumstances in which they would see a state as so bound up with a culture or ethnicity.” I can’t really think of any other cases, either. But then, I don’t see any other nation being attacked in those terms, either. It would be better to ask why that is.
Jim Denham said,
February 20, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Bob from Brockley drew my attention to the following, from a site called ‘Greens Engage’:
“Update – see also Shiraz Socialist, another place on the left which fights antisemitism. Shiraz’s reading of the letter is that the AWL believe anybody objecting to Israel’s existence is a “de facto antisemite”. I think this is a misreading.I don’t thnk AWL are making “automatic” points – they are responding in a letter and missing out a lot of the qualification which would have been possible in a longer piece. For the AWL to write that “the core and root of modern anti-Semitism is the denial of Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself” seems right in the world of the left, from which most contemporary British antisemitism emanates. “The core” because campaigining about Israel has a vigorous galvanising power, makes headlines, gets people out on the street. “The root” since campaiging for Palestinian emancipation which accepts Israel’s existence does not attract such astonishing antisemitism, does not depend on misrepresenting the conflict as a genocide attempt by Israel, nor misrepresent Zionism as some kind of ethnically exclusive expansionist bid for world domination, nor advance conspiracy theories about Israeli control of the media or Israeli tentacles reaching into British government, nor diminish actual and stated supremacist tendencies of many Palestinian factions, instead touting them as ‘the resistance’, nor stridently insist on a single state solution for ostensibly anti-racist reasons without being involved in or supporting any of the coexistence work necessary to avoid a Jewish minority falling foul of racism against it. Meron Benvenisti’s anti-Zionism is one kind of anti-Zionism to take seriously – it is a kind that AWL don’t mean to refer to – this kind does not “deny” but instead reasons. But there’s something singularly dodgy about unpragmatic, ignorant, unworked out, vituperative anti-Zionism which does not acknowledge the fears of ordinary Israelis. And when was the last time you came across any other kind here in Britain?”
Jenny said,
March 21, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Here’s something you may want to consider: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5420584.ece
Granted,it’s anecdotal,but I think it gives hope that Hamas can negociate.
voltairespriest said,
March 22, 2009 at 12:01 am
Sure – of course Hamas can negotiate. And it’s certainly also true that Palestinians are not a universally pro-Islamist body in the sense that either the US and Israeli right wing or indeed sections of the “anti-imperialist” left would like.
Jenny said,
March 22, 2009 at 12:19 am
Yes,but the author also presented them as completely harmless which is partially accurate in that it seems they have an off/on sense of rationalith.
voltairespriest said,
March 22, 2009 at 12:32 am
Well, I wouldn’t say that Hamas are “completely harmless”. They’re a very reactionary group, and one which certainly does come from a theocratic political tradition. However I tend to think of Islamist politics as a kind of continuum – the AK government in Ankara has a heritage which comes from Necmettin Erbakan’s Refah Party, which again was elected and openly Islamist. That doesn’t mean that the current Erdogan administration is therefore a threat to anyone: it clearly isn’t.
Similarly, despite Hamas’ dodgy political pedigree (which is much closer to theocratic, anti-semitic ideas and to violence than either AK or Refah), it’s entirely possible that they could end up negotiating a settlement. I certainly don’t buy into the idea that this is some theatrical re-enactment of World War 2 with Israel as the Allies and Hamas as the Nazis.
The fact is that bad people are often the ones that end up making lasting peace. It’s been seen time and again throughout history.