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 Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters) :: 0805242244
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Author: Guest
From King David, to the philosopher Spinoza, to boxer Barney Ross, the Jewish Encounter Series has been as varied as it has been excellent. Now, into this mix comes Ruth Wisse's thoughtful, provocative essay, "Jews and Power" polemical in the best sense of the word. Against a grain of modern scholarship that tends to run counterfactual in its effort to imagine Jews and the Jewish state as both ordinary and extraordinarily bad, Wisse produces a work which effectively demolishes both perspectives. Her relatively short book examines Jewish history from the period of the 2nd Commonwealth to the modern state of Israel in a manner both engaging and highly readable.
Wisse argues that the uniqueness of the Jewish community exists in a relentless self criticism going back at least to Roman times. Unlike other cultures which faced with powerlessness tended to blame the other, Jews through their first and second exile sought to affix the blame neither to their neighbors nor their stars, but to themselves. Moreover, Wisse shows no shyness about asking tough questions, such as those who imagine prefer being powerless and in danger to being strong. This will make some uncomfortable, but still she pulls no punches.
Another interesting topic covered is the contradiction in anti-Judaism, despising Jews for being both too weak (stateless, poor) and too strong (seizing control of the world, too smart, too rich, and though she gives it insufficient coverage, killing god). As it happens the same paradigm exists today. Two professors from distinguished universities raise a firestorm by arguing that neo-cons and the Israel lobby (read Jews) have seized control of the American government policy against the national interest (an impressive trick by any standard) even as others argue against all evidence that the world's perpetual denunciations of Israel is the same as the treatment of any other state.
To her great credit Wisse does not embrace the false modesty of imagining the Jews as the same as any other people, recognizing how, against all odds, they continue to make contributions to culture, the sciences, and philosophy that far outstrip their meager numbers. She likewise recognizes the uniqueness of the State of Israel, both in terms of the good (the return of an exiled people to their homeland, a thing without precedent in human history other than the last time they did it), as well as the bad the failure of the Zionist enterprise to achieve the normalization of the status of Jews that its founders imagined.
If one were to quibble with Wisse's book, its main shortcoming is that she could have delved further into the theological underpinnings of Jewish self identity. Does Judaism's relentless monotheism, lacking a serious conception of a devil foster the tendency towards self criticism that she describes? Is that Jewish theology embraces an oversized eschatological goal - the perfection of the world through Jewish action - likewise have an affect?
That said, this book, at less than 200 pages, could hardly be expected to be all embracing. What it is, however, is small and impactful to a degree that belies it size, just like the phenomenon it seeks to describe.
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Author: Guest
Ruth Wisse begins this book by exploring some of the ways in which Jews have traditionally examined their own behavior. And that's an interesting point of view. Is it really true that the Arab-Israeli conflict is partially cultural, with Jews tending to blame themselves for much of what happens? Is Arab culture different in this respect? If so, that could explain a tendency of both sides to examine Jewish behavior far more than Arab behavior, and it might explain what I consider an exaggeration of Israel's importance by both sides in the conflict.
Wisse is quick to point out that while Jews had been confined to ghettos for centuries, emancipation led to a different type of problem: modern anti-Semitism. The accusations by anti-Semites were intended to show that Jews "were unworthy of the legal and social position conferred upon them." And even when anti-Semitism reached epidemic proportions, the carriers of this malady saw no reason to stop: it appeared to put them at no disadvantage. Meanwhile, the Jews themselves were powerless to stop it, as they were the prey.
As Wisse explains, while some anti-liberal political parties were not "originally or innately anti-Semitic," there were "no anti-Semitic parties that were not innately anti-liberal."
We then get to Zionism, and Wisse explains some of its origins. But, as Wisse tells us, Zionism lacked one ingredient, namely "the military planning force that every nation assumes it needs in order to regain, gain, or maintain its land." Although Wisse traces the start of Jewish defence forces back to 1920, I think that only after years of even more calamities, topped by the 1939 British White Paper, did the majority of Jews realize the need for an independent state, including armed forces.
The most interesting part of this book deals with the innovations of anti-Zionism, and the ways in which it has gone beyond anti-Semitism. Once again, as in the case of anti-Semitism, the animus against the accused was "not directed to any correctable attribute or rectifiable lapses." But there were differences. While National Socialist Germany took the lead in anti-Semitic propaganda, it did not organize "a Pan-European movement around that issue." On the other hand, "opposition to Israel became the glue of Pan-Arabism."
European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises (and I would add that they blamed the Jews for suffering the effects of anti-Semitism), but "Arab leaders created the crisis for which they blamed the Jews." That is, they refused to allow the resettlement of Arab refugees simply in order to blame Jews.
Although the European anti-Semites did sporadically boycott Jewish stores and businesses in the 1930s, Arabs went beyond this to arrange systematic boycotts of Israel. I agree: just ask yourself if you have ever seen Israel participate in the Mediterranean Games. I think we all realize that Israel has a Mediterranean coastline. Don't you ever wonder what the nations who go along with such a boycott are thinking? I think the threats of academic boycotts of Israel are also an example of this phenomenon.
I think most of us are aware of the mass rallies that the National Socialists held. Once again, as Wisse points out, anti-Zionists have gone beyond this to use weapons of mass communication.
A fifth aspect of the enhancement of anti-Zionism over anti-Semitism that Wisse mentions is the use (Wisse uses the word "conscription") of the United Nations. I would add two more aspects: the conscription of some of the Western media and some Western academic departments.
The author says that while the purpose of Zionism and Israel was to normalize Jewish existence, this did not happen, just as Jewish emancipation did not regularize the political status of European Jews. The Arab-Israeli conflict turned out to be "an asymmetrical attack by the Arab-Islamic world on the idea of a Jewish homeland." Yes, some folks say that the source of the problem is the fact that Israel has some territory in the West Bank. But Wisse answers that "since the disputed territories are Israel's as a result of Arab aggression, they could not retroactively have become its cause."
Wisse does discuss the Levantine Arabs, and says that Rashid Khalidi compares these people with peoples who lack independence, namely the Armenians and Kurds. Of course, Armenia actually exists now, but Wisse shows us that there really are huge differences between the Levantine Arabs and peoples who have long had their own language and culture. In addition, it is curious that the Kurds and Armenians (along with the Jews) have long been opposed by the Arabs.
Meanwhile, Wisse goes into detail about the extent to which the Levantine Arabs have fashioned their entire identity, myths, symbols, slogans, and domestic and foreign policies around opposition to the Jews. I agree that all this is terribly counterproductive, not only for what it does to the Levantine Arabs outright, and not only for the immediate threat to world peace, but also because of the precedent it has set: what goes around can come around.
The author does mention the terrible mistake of the Oslo agreement, which "triggered an immediate escalation of terror, not only against Israel but against the West." This was an avoidable error which many people easily foresaw but were unable to prevent. Wisse adds that no Israeli initiative could correct what went wrong in Arab societies, just as no Jewish initiative "could have solved the German problem" that led to National Socialism.
Wisse concludes by wisely explaining that aggressors against a democratic system can be invigorated by their anti-Semitism to move against society as a whole: "why stop at the Jews?" I agree: it is unlikely that anti-Zionism will stop with the Jews.
I recommend this book.
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