Office of Misrepresentations
I received an email this week from Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) that begs to be read as commentary in the margins of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. In his speech, Netanyahu gave his inflated figure for the number of Israelis living over the Green Line, said that most lived in suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and then asserted (emphasis added):
…under any realistic peace agreement these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be incorporated into the final borders of Israel.
Netanyahu did not explain what he meant by “national importance.” But in Israeli politics, national usually refers to nationalism, to Jews as a national group. The implication was that places in the West Bank that are central to national identity because of their place in ancient Jewish history or myth, and so must remain under Israeli rule, even though they do not have any practical defensive value.
The email, sent this week, invites foreign correspondents to a tour of Hebron under the auspices of the GPO, which is itself part of the Prime Minister’s Office. It says that the guide will be David Wilder, without mentioning that Wilder is the English-language spokesman of the Jewish settlers in Hebron. “Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein will accompany the tour,” the notice says, adding that the first stop in Hebron will be:
10:00 – Tel Hebron (Tel Rumeida) – Historical & archaeological explanation; explanation of the living link between the Jewish People and Hebron as the basis of national and religious Jewish identity.
So the trip will be led by the representative of the Hebron settlers, and its point is to underline that Hebron is a place of “national importance” and part of the foundation of Jewish identity. Relinquish it, and we’ll all forget we’re Jewish.
Lest one miss the hint, last year the cabinet put the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem – both towns in the West Bank – on the list of Israeli national heritage sites, though they are not in sovereign Israeli territory as defined by Israel itself. This year Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that his ministry would set up a program to finance class trips of Israeli schoolchildren to Hebron – again, to build Jewish national identity through connection to the phyiscal place and its mythic past. In various ways, official policy is aimed at defining the Tomb and the Israeli-controlled sector of Hebron as places of “national significance” that Israel must continue to rule.
In March, I traveled to Hebron with my class of Columbia School of Journalism students for a more complex view of the city. Wilder was on our schedule, but so was a tour with a representative of Breaking the Silence, the organization of dedicated IDF veterans that seeks to educate fellow Israelis about what is happening in the occupied territories, particularly Hebron, and about the practical and moral cost to Israeli society. Our Breaking the Silence guide began the day with a stop in the settlement of Kiryat Arba next to Hebron to see the local pilgrimage site – the tomb of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, in Meir Kahane Park. An almost ritual attempt by settlers to prevent us from entering Hebron by getting a military commander to declare the town “a closed military area” was fended off by young soldiers at the IDF Spokesman’s office, who got the commander to change his mind. (A note to foreign journalists: It’s not the fault of the kids at the spokesman’s office that you don’t get the info you request. They’re usually on your side, but the military bureaucracy doesn’t give them much help or cooperation.)
During the part of the day we spent with Wilder, he told us that “the Palestinian people never existed,” and that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes in 1948 did so because “Arab leaders told them to get out of the way” so that Arab forces could “finish what Hitler started.” He also complained about a square in Ramallah named after a Palestinian terrorist. He was entirely right that naming public places after terrorists is unconscionable. But I have a suspicion that spending a morning with Wilder is not going to have the impact on foreign journalists that the GPO and Edelstein want.
Which brings me back to that speech and the embarrassing response of members of Congress.
“There’s no use trying,” Alice tells Rep. Queen (D.-NY) in an argument about Looking Glass Land. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said Ms. Queen, who had just finished applauding Netanyahu’s speech. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
If senators and representatives believed Netanyahu’s idea of a “realistic peace agreement” that includes a tendril of Israeli territory stretching into Hebron, they’ve been practicing a full hour a day. Netanyahu himself understands the implications of his demand, and therefore recently described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “insoluble.”
King of the Jews
Speaking of that speech, Todd Gitlin has written a brilliant gloss on it:
Not so long ago, neoconservatives were splenetic about an academic left which presumed that ethnic or gender identity was the ultimate, immovable premise of knowledge and the foundation for all values… Surely, argued the opponents of identity politics, enlightened moderns had to understand that there were universal values; that they trumped all time-bound, space-bound values, whether national, tribal, racial, sexual, or what-have-you…Some who took this position called themselves liberals, most called themselves conservatives, but all agreed that a person thinks with an individual mind, and that it was presumptuous—also philosophically untenable—to think as a representative of a group. …
That was in another century, and besides, the debate is (almost) dead. But I think of identity politics again as I read the text of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last month to the U. S. Congress. The one that was interrupted by bipartisan applause sixty times. …
This was the gauntlet that Netanyahu and his Congressional enablers flung down before Barack Obama, the one that affirmed that “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers” and built up to this peroration:
I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state when I say to you, representatives of America: Thank you.
And I’m waiting for the diehard opponents of identity politics to carve out a moment of criticism for this man who affirms that he speaks for the entire Jewish people…
Sauce for goose, meet gander.
As a gloss on this gloss, I should note that nationalism and the demand for self-determination are ethnic politics in their essence. But as Chaim Gans rigorously argues in his superb book, A Just Zionism, ethnic nationalism comes in more than one form. There’s the collectivist type, in which the individual sees himself or herself as a mere cell in the ethnic organism. But some ethnic nationalists begin from an essentially liberal, individualist perspective: “They believe that many individuals have interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations, because their culture constitutes an important part of their identity…” They seek self-determination in order to express their rights as individuals to maintain that culture.
But that’s an aside. Netanyahu belongs to the collectivist side, which should most upset those opponents of identity politics.
Besides that, he doesn’t seem to know what his job is. He is prime minister of Israel. Unhappy as it makes me, he can legitimately claim to speak for the State of Israel and for its citizens, a majority of whom voted for parties in his coalition. There is no leader of the Jewish people, elected or for that matter dynastic. There’s no way to elect one – because Jews certainly don’t agree on who belongs to the Jewish people, and they surely would not agree on the need or logic of choosing a leader for it. “I speak on behalf of the Jewish people,” he says, showing that he does indeed practice believing impossible things.
Misrepresenting the Fallen
The old Israeli argument about the proper text of Yizkor to say at memorial ceremonies for fallen soldiers broke out again this week. In some ways, it’s like an argument over whether iron is an animal or a vegetable.
The original Yizkor is a prayer for the dead; it begins with Hebrew meaning “May God remember…” According to the usual accounts, Labor Zionist ideologue Berl Katznelson wrote the secular version after the Tel Hai battle of 1920 – which as Yael Zerubavel has incisively written, was quickly crafted into a defining mythic event for the growing Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. Berl’s version begins, “May the nation of Israel remember its sons and daughters…” A translation that better conveys the connotations would be, “May the Jewish people remember…”
As reported in Ha’aretz, both versions have been in use at IDF ceremonies, reflecting the everlasting Kulturkampf between secular and religious Jews. Last week, it seems, Chief of Staff Benny Gantz’s office answered a letter on the subject by stating that official IDF policy is to use the version with “God.” Naturally, all hell broke lose over who should remember the fallen.
Naftali Rothenberg, a liberal-leaning Orthodox rabbi, argued this week that the secular version should be used. Other traditional prayers are recited at military memorials; secular families of the fallen should be allowed to hear a text that reflects their feelings as well. I can accept that argument, but the text is still wrong.
When Berl wrote, an ethnic conflict was bursting into flame between two national groups with the same homeland. The Jews mourned the Jews, quite naturally. But today’s IDF soldiers belong to an army defending the State of Israel, not just the Jews in it. And some of the fallen are not Jews. According to an official IDF website, the community in Israel with the highest number of fallen soldiers in proportion to its population is Beit Jann, a Druse village.The Druse are the most salient example of non-Jews who defend this country, but there are plenty of others.
The proper text would state, “May the citizens of Israel remember…” Less poetic, I suppose. But much more fair to the full community of bereaved families. More accurate in describing who has given their lives and for what. The argument of the last week has been over which untenable thing to believe.
Misremembering the Rebels
Another local storm in Looking Glass Land: On Sunday it came out that the Defense Ministry had published an ad inviting people to a memorial ceremony for the Irgun fighters who were “murdered” in the Altalena affair of June 1948.
In my forthcoming book, The Unmaking of Israel, I tell the Altalena story and its significance for the making of Israel. For now, suffice it to say that the Irgun tried to import arms for its own units after they’d supposedly been integrated into the newly created army of the State of Israel. It defied the government’s orders to turn the weapons over to the state. If fought battles with the Israeli army on the beach near Netanyah and on the beachfront of downtown Tel Aviv. The Altalena affair began with rebellion. The firm insistence of David Ben-Gurion that the rebellion be put down is what saved Israel from the fate of other new nations – ongoing internal war between the former liberation movements.
Reports suggesting that the ad was partly Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s fault were a trifle unfair. There’s plenty for which Barak can be blamed, and he’s known for micromanaging, but I wouldn’t expect him to proofread every ad the ministry publishes.
The problem is not just that the words went right by some lower official. It’s that the surviving members of the Irgun and those who revere them on the Israeli right are still remembering them as murdered heroes. It’s almost too impossible to believe.
There is nothing new about Bibi’s views. They were expressed best a year and five months after the exodus from Egypt by the panicked “Security” voice of the day:
“This is nothing, for strong are the People who inhabit the Land; and there cities are great and fortified, and moreover we saw the Giants there.
“Amalek inhabits the Negev country, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites, dwell in the hills; and the Canaanite dwells on the coast and on the Jordan.”
– Bemidbar 13:28-29
So many interesting statements here! So much to disagree with! (Civilly, of course.)
Like it or not, Hebron etc. are in fact “national heritage sites.” The wording is correct, and would be correct even if they were under the jurisdiction of another sovereign state. You yourself pointed out the difference between the nation of Israel and the State of Israel.
It’s true that the Palestinian people had never existed until very recently, probably after 1967, if they even exist today (the latter a question of semantics, mostly). The question is also totally irrelevant to Jewish national rights in the Land of Israel, or the lack thereof. It’s no more legitimate to steal the homeland of southern Syrians than that of Palestinians.
I have no problem with naming public squares after terrorists. We do it, too. The question of the legitimacy of terrorism is complicated (I think anti-Zionist terrorism has sometimes been legitimate), but the question of honoring terrorists is actually simpler.
Good for you for defying the army bureaucrats and getting into Hebron!
Todd Gitlin’s comments are completely true, but there’s nothing original about them. Neoconservative hypocrisy on ethnocentrism is a staple criticism coming from the “paleo” and radical right. Many Jews support ethnic/racial/religious identity for Israeli Jews but not for similar American groups. I’ll just add that the same criticism applies to the Zionist American left (including liberals).
Re Yizkor, if it were up to me, they wouldn’t go tinkering around with prayers. “May God remember…” is just fine as it is. I say that as an atheist. If you want it to be more inclusive (to use that word you people use), then I’m sympathetic to “citizens.” The soldiers died defending the state, not the nation.
There’s a problem with “citizens” as opposed to “God” or “the nation,” though. God, of course, is eternal. The nation of Israel is perpetual, so its memory will be perpetual (in theory, of course). The citizenry is a snapshot comprising those citizens who are alive at this moment. Asking the citizens of Israel to remember is asking only those of us alive today to remember.
How about, simply, “May the nation (`am) remember…”? This exploits an ambiguity in contemporary Hebrew. Many times it’s ambiguous whether `am refers to the nation of Israel or to the commonwealth (state) of Israel. For instance, the often used “the people `am will decide [in an election]” literally refers to the electorate, but the connotation is the nation of Israel.
In any case, I agree with you in principle. “The nation of Israel” is too exclusive. But, sheesh, why do these Zionists like Katznelson have to screw up everything that already exists?
Important typo: I should have said “it,” not “they,” for the putative Palestinian people.
Aaron:” The citizenry is a snapshot comprising those citizens who are alive at this moment. Asking the citizens of Israel to remember is asking only those of us alive today to remember”
But, Aaron, the present is all we have. We bind each other in histories to (try and) control the present. I do not think it matters who started what; what matters is what is happening now. Certainly we need historical analysis. But those in Gaza live this now. As do Israeli children hit by a rocket. We slave all events to the past, instead of saying no more. I think of a “crime against humanity” as a declaration of this we shall no longer be, here, at this moment. The declaration is one of observers as well as participants. It is actually a terrible promise to make to yourself, to be this no more.
The murder of Jews on the Altalena is referring, among other things, to the deliberate shooting of men who had jumped into the water off the ship and were trying to surrender. Even pro-BG “statists” might have a problem with that.