While Israeli ministers and Jewish activists continue to describe
every criticism of Israel - such as a problematic public opinion
poll showing that Europeans see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
as the greatest threat to world peace - liberal Jewish circles
in the West are facing a different political threat.
Recently, several articles appearing in the West (most of
them written by Jewish commentators) questioned whether it
was a mistake to establish the State of Israel along ethnic
lines - as a Jewish state. The settlements, it has been written,
have ended any possibility of geographic separation between
Jews and Palestinians, and therefore the remaining solution,
in practice, is to establish a binational state.
A specific reference to this idea appears in the October issue
of the influential New York Review of Books in an article
by (Jewish) commentator Tony Judt. At the end of a detailed
analysis of the status of the conflict, he writes: "The
behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way
everyone else looks at Jews... but the depressing truth is
that Israel today is bad for the Jews ...to convert Israel
from a Jewish state to a binational one would cause far less
disruption to most Jews and Arabs than its religious and nationalist
foes will claim ... a binational state in the Middle East
would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership.
The security of Jews and Arabs alike would need to be guaranteed
by international force ... but the alternatives are far, far
worse."
Similar ideas are appearing in other journals, also reflecting
the disappointment over Israel's policy in the territories.
The veteran Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently
wrote: "In the perpetual war against Israel - its enemies
are winning, but history admonishes Israel..." And in
the leftist liberal journal, The Nation, there was an article
this month by Daniel Lazar titled "The One-State Solution"
and that refers to one state for two peoples - Jewish and
Palestinian. The article concludes: "Hounded by rabbis,
terrorized by suicide bombers, hemmed in by nationalism, Israelis
see no alternative but to throw in their lot with a strongman
like Sharon. The logic is irresistible, but suicidal - unless
somebody can figure a way out of the ideological cage."
The Jewish Week, printed in New York and among the most widely
circulated publications, featured a column last Friday by
its editor and publisher, Gary Rosenblatt, in which he wrote:
"Israel's military approach to the Palestinian conflict
- respond to attacks and defeat the enemy - does not work
when applied to U.S. campus ideological clashes over the Middle
East. And the more strident the pro-Israel position, the less
likely tens of thousands of American Jewish college students
are to be sympathetic to the Jewish state. A Hillel director
on the West Coast, who asks not to be named, stressed that
`strident pro-Israel advocates who are unwilling to concede
that Israel has a problem with settlements, occupation, and
other controversial stands, only end up making more Jewish
students skeptical. If you insist you are always right, you
lose credibility'."
Large Jewish organizations in the United States continue to
stand behind Israel, but many rank and file members feel increasingly
displeased with the aggressive policy of the government of
Israel and the growing strength of religious-nationalist influences
in Israel. Anti-Semitic entities in Europe and the U.S. are
using Israel's policy in the territories. It backs up their
propaganda, but it is highly doubtful that this is indeed
evidence of a corresponding rise in the scale of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is not the main reason behind the increased
criticism of Israel among liberal circles in Europe. Indeed,
there are today more incidents of anti-Semitism in Europe,
and clearly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to
that. It should be noted that the support for Jews (and Israel)
in the 1950s and 1960s, which was born of feelings of guilt,
has dropped considerably in a generation that no longer remembers
the Holocaust. However, the proper comparison to make when
assessing anti-Semitism is not between 2003 and 1963, but
between 2003 and 1933, when Europe was calm and prior to Hitler's
rise to power. Even that comparison will highlight the political
and social changes for the better in the Jews' situation.
Constant emphasis on the "perpetual presence" of
anti-Semitism achieves the opposite results. It is both despairing
and may also weaken the hand of those combating anti-Semitism.
The fact that Islam (even non-fundamentalist Islam, as evidenced
by outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's remarks)
disseminates images borrowed from Christian-European anti-Semitism
does not contradict the vast differences that still exist
between the two forms of anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism
grew out of religious grounds and later adopted political
and racist attributes and objectives. The other anti-Semitism,
contemporary Muslim, was born out of political reasons and
is now taking on racist attributes. Associating contemporary
Muslim anti-Semitism with classic Western anti-Semitism is
very convenient for extremists, both European and Israeli.
It is true that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the demands
of anti-Semites that Israel and the Jews act with more tolerance
and morality than other nations. But they are not the ones
who determined that Israel should be a light unto the nations;
that is a demand made throughout the generations by Jewish
ethics and that is the bond we asked the nations of the world
to redeem in 1948.
We should therefore not complain if the world now demands that
we redeem that bond. There is of course a double standard
in this, but it is also recognition, for or better or worse,
of the status of the "chosen people."
In this context it is fitting to quote Tomas Masaryk, who established
independent Czechoslovakia (and a friend of Zionism) who cautioned
his people: "Nations fall with the fall of ideas with
which they were established."