The comparison [between violence by Blacks in the 1970s South and Palestinians in Israel] reflects a basic mistake we Americans make over and over again: we "Americanize" the rest of the world's conflicts, seeing them through the lens of our own national experience. We look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and see two groups of people divided by ethnicity, race, and religion. We see one of them as historically powerful and the other as historically powerless. We see one of them as oppressor and the other as victim. And, most crucially, we explain this dynamic by reasons that are familiar to us from our own experience: the powerful group oppresses because of a historical commitment to sustaining what it imagines to be its own superiority and to reinforcing what it imagines to be the inferiority of the victim group. The "freedom struggle" is the fight of the group labeled as inferior to establish its inherent human dignity and equality, and to secure the rights and advantages that belong to dignified and equal human beings.
[...]
What has emerged over the last 60 years in and around Israel is not a "freedom struggle" in anything like the sense of the struggle of American blacks for freedom from slavery, from Jim Crow, and from their vicious and oppressive legacy. What has emerged instead is a struggle over the ownership of disputed land after the demise of Western colonialism in the region. The Palestinian terrorism whose efficacy D.G. Martin wants us to reflect on has been violence not to establish a principle of equality and dignity, but violence to extinguish the fact and idea of a Jewish state in the region, and to turn "every inch" of the current State of Israel into a Muslim theocracy. Any doubt about this is resolved by even a quick glance at the founding covenant of Hamas. (I recognize that many Palestinians do not deny Israel's right to exist, that some Palestinians are not Muslim, and that some Palestinians would not want a theocratic Palestinian state. These Palestinians, however, are by and large not the people practicing the terrorist methods that Martin invites us to consider.)
Of course, the intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle has led some people on both sides of the divide to demonize those on the other, and to speak of them, and treat them, as less than fully human. This vocabulary and these actions can, at times, revive echoes and images of American white supremacy in our American ears and eyes.
But Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem of today are decidedly not the Oxford, North Carolina of 1970--or, for that matter, of 1770 or 1870.
So it's not just that torching an uninhabited tobacco warehouse in Oxford in 1970 is different from blowing up a Passover Seder in an Israeli hotel in Netanya in March of 2002 in the sense that one was property destruction and the other cold-blooded murder. That's true, but it misses the much more important point that the two incidents can only be grouped together as "political violence" in aid of a "freedom struggle" in the same way that (to use my earlier example) the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania can be grouped together as "unexpected incidents at sea" that led to "shipping disasters."
Spot on. I'd broaden it out a bit to say that leftist critics of Israel often "Westernize" the conflict, in that they wish to incorporate their pre-existing (and devastating) attacks on imperialism to the situation. In reading critiques by so-called "leftists," I'm often struck by a weird sense that the majority of them basically thought "Hey! I've got this perfectly good theory of Colonialism. Why not use it?" After all, while neo-Colonialism is all well and good, if you squint hard enough, Israel can become a real life Colony in the Rhodesia model--and what self-respecting liberation theorist can pass up a target like that?
The problem, of course, is that Israel isn't "the West," Jews aren't European Christians, and whereas colonialism implies outsiders versus insiders, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is between two insiders (historically oppressed ones at that).
One could rather easily I believe deconstruct some of the basic assumptions (many closetly anti-Semetic) that undergird the leftist Critique of Israel. And indeed, that is a project I wish to undertake at some time off blog.
But for now, Professor Muller's post is a incisive and badly needed analysis of how many liberals misinterpret the conflict.
5 comments:
This is not an anonymous advertizement. You paint a true picture of the liberal mindset towards the Isreali/Palestinian conflict. In fact, the modern liberal mind sees everything from the worldview that "truth is true if it's true for you." Of course, this sounds radically individualistic until one realizes that when a group of people, drawn together by their similar conclusions, will believe that their truth is truer thsn ours by some virtue of minuscule plurality.
Therefore, they can reach a consensus that every war America wages is a new Vietnam, every ethnic conflict is a replay of the civil rights struggle, etc. Anti-Americanism being their modus operandi, the US-supported Isrealis must be holding the fire hoses on the helpless Palestinians.
The New Age Liberal simply recasts foreign conflicts as metaphors for past American conflicts not because they are intellectually superior, but because they are intellectually lazy. Their Internet homepage is Moveon.org and their newspaper of record is the New York Times. To the New Age Liberal, reading a conservative opinion is like a vampire welcoming a suntan. They're seeking gold stars, not the truth.
I have documented these Leftist personality traits on my website in a number of articles, including "And A Gold Star For You!", "New Age Liberal Dictionary", et al.
www.moralscienceclub.blogspot.com
No purchase necessary.
In 1964 I hitch-hiked around Syria and Jordan, much of the time with an American Jew and an English Jew and a Danish woman. We spent most of our time in Palistinian homes and places. These Palistinians were not allowed to return to their homes in Isreal. In 1948, the majority of the people in what is now Isreal were NOT Jewish, so I would say that a better analogy would be our taking over control of Indian territory and rounding up the native people and congining them to reservations. Most of the Isrealis are of European decent and not from Palistine. Some more recent immigrants to Isreal are from Asia and North Africa. So again, we have a mostly European people coming into an Asian country and displacing the native majority. We were told that the native Palistinian Jews were not much in favor of the creation of Isreal. I met a number of Christian Palistinians who were not allowed to return to their homes in Isreal after they fled the war of 1948. I recall getting a ride with a pair of Jordanian airline pilots who were brothers from Jordanian Jeruselem to Jerico, where we stopped at their beautiful orchard beside the river Jordan and I had my first taste of the giant, delicious pomello citrus fruit. This winter I recounted that experience to some young Isrealis when we got caught in the Bolivian blockades, and I was told that those Jordanians probably preferred the Isreali rule of their land. Were they pulling my leg? They seemed serious. I wonder if the Isrealis have taken their irrigation water for their West Bank settlements?
You say they're "European" like that's their native territory. Yet of course, the Jewish history is that of a community IN EXILE, one that was forcibly removed from its homeland repetitively, returned, and was removed again. To say they're "European" is to deny the relevancy of their Jewish history--it puts on them on par with Poles or Russians or whomever that "happen to be" Jewish.
This is precisely what I was arguing when I said that some leftists are lazily trying to apply the colonialist narrative (American colonization) to the IP conflict. It doesn't work because Jews aren't outsiders in Palestine, they're exiles. Indeed, one could very aptly turn the Native American metaphor on its head--saying the Jews "colonized" Israel would be like saying a Native American who left the reservation was "colonizing" New York. Perversely, a centuries long history of Jewish disempowerment in their homeland is the primary justification given by leftists for their further disempowerment--a state of affairs which makes a mockery of liberal ideals such as "looking to the bottom."
I would stick with my conclusion that most Isrealis' ancesters did not arrive in Isreal/Palistine until after WW11, and prior to their arrival, they were culturally more European than Asian. Even most of those who came from the old Ottoman Empire spoke a European language- namely Ladino or Spanish. To the native Palistinians, these immigrants were culturally different and mostly with European educations, mother languages and habits. Today, when I meet Isrealis, they are more Europian/American culturally than Asian/Palistinian. About the only two things that I can see about Isreal that are Asian are location and the fact that Isreal is a religious state.
"You say they're "European" like that's their native territory."
And he's right.
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