This the pivot. I am tired of fighting for or against Israel because of the Holocaust or suicide bombing; I am tired of fighting for or against Palestinians because of cleansing and occupation. This conflict is just one more, in torturous slow motion, seen throughout history and before history. I will not turn from this conflict for only one reason: we fight our own evolution. There is evidence that the Homo line engaged in canabilism. Given the current typology of that line, is seems that our direct ancestors were copresent with now extinct lateral shifts of the line. I think it likely our ancestors did some cleansing along the way, both within and across species. I think we evolved from that cleansing. Look at the honesty of Torah. And Qur’an.

I of absolutely no importance continue to face this conflict (only by words) because I thereby face my own evolution. And I can do so, even if only in words, because evolution fights itself: look at Torah a second time, look at Qur’an a second time. We are humanity fighting itself, our only hope. And from that:

—Why not “I’m a Jew because the Jewish people produced the Bible, whose stories and poetry have become the common heritage of mankind?” Why not “I’m a Jew because of my people’s ethos of learning, argument, and dialogue, because of the Talmud, midrashim, and thinkers ranging from Maimonides to Spinoza to Soleveitchik?” —

To Spinoza.

“It is the responsibility of God to confront Itself.”
–Anthoney Pau Cabrales

I apologize for parasitizing your words.

greg

And as for why be Jewish, Paul Newman’s reason for considering himself Jewish was “I find it more challenging”.

Of course counterfactuals aren’t terribly helpful, but I think most of the world can agree that Hamas wouldn’t be sending rockets at Israelis if the Jewish state had been founded in Uganda, Argentina or Madagascar. (In fact, Hamas most likely wouldn’t exist at all.) We can also probably agree that had Israel been created in any of those places, there would likely be Ugandan, Argentinian or Malgache groups attacking the Jewish state instead of Islamist ones. I don’t think that would necessarily make those people anti-semites.

Likewise, I don’t think that my rejection of citizenship and statehood based on ethno-religious criteria makes me an anti-semite. But perhaps you’d beg to differ. Further, who’s to say that Israel is a “major part” of Jewish identity? After all, there are more French, American and Argentinian Jews than there are Israeli Jews. Personally, I know Jews for whom Israel plays absolutely no part in their identity, religious or otherwise. And what does that say about pre-Zionist Jewish identity? If Israel is such a major part of Jewish identity, does that mean that it was somehow incomplete until 1948?

As for the fundamentalist Christians, I’ve not read Gerhom’s book, but I have spent many a year in the Bible Belt, and I can tell you that from my experience, it’s more accurate to say that they dislike Jews less than they dislike Arabs and Muslims. But it’s right that at the end of the day, both are just tools to bring about the second coming.

So I don’t think the parallel is a fair one, because I think you’d find that Iranians and Palestinians and Lebanese would be more or less indifferent to the idea of a Jewish state, were it in South America instead of the Middle East.

But let’s be honest here, you’re not mentioning the odd hate-monger, you’re mentioning Lebanon, Iran and Gaza specifically, explicitly singling these places out. It’s hard to read the paragraph I cited above as anything but an implication that suicide bombings and Qassam rockets are anything but the result of anti-Semitism, pure and simple.

And that’s what I take issue with. Rocket attacks on civilian targets in Sderot or Haifa and suicide bombings of cafes and buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are indefensible and disgusting. Explaining them away as attacks on Jews for being Jews, though, is the same as Americans believing that “they” hate “us” because we’re free. That is stripping a political action of its political context, giving a facile explanation of the act which strips Israelis and Americans of any responsibility for the political context within which it is occurring. (Incidentally, I am equally annoyed when I hear the flip side of the same rhetoric that would have Israel bomb Gaza or Beirut purely because Israelis hate and want to kill Arabs and Muslims.)

I know that you’re much too thoughtful and nuanced to make blanket condemnations on entire peoples, which is why that one paragraph really bothered me.

By the by, I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed your translation of Segev’s The Seventh Million, and I can’t wait until I’ve got the time to get to One Palestine, Complete.

There’s just one part that really, really bothers me:

Growing up in Israel, as you have, in the age of suicide bombings, Qassam missiles, and virulent bellicose anti-Semitic rhetoric from Islamic extremists in Lebanon, Iran, and even closer to home, in Gaza, you hardly need to go to Poland to learn that there are still people who want to murder Jews simply because they are Jews, and to learn that if we don’t defend ourselves, no one else will.

Here in Lebanon, I’ve never met anyone who wants to “murder Jews simply because they are Jews,” although there are people who would be glad to hear about Israelis being killed because they’re Israeli. Likewise, if Iranians were so bent on killing Jews qua Jews, why would there be tens of thousands of Iranian Jews represented by their own member of the Majlis? I can’t speak for Gaza, because I’ve never been there, but I have been to Ramallah and Qalqilya and Beit Sahour, and I can say that there’s little in common between the bloodthirsty anti-semites you’re conjuring and the people I’ve met in those places.

The idea that Arabs and Muslims just want to kill Jews for being Jewish is only a slightly less inflated version of the mentality that would see all goyim as just waiting for an excuse to start the next round of pogroms. This is a blind spot in Israeli and American discourse on the Middle East, and from Beirut, Damascus or Ramallah, it’s hard to believe that this inability to see isn’t intentional.