Jewishness and Zionism

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called "On Jewishness". In today's post, I want to venture into somewhat controversial territory again – I wish to describe the effect that the Jewish dominance of the intellectual scene has on Gentiles, and then turn to the vexed issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations. My reason for doing so is to uncover a type of madness in the Left as well as the Right, that cuts across the political spectrum, an insanity that has worsened under the Trump presidency. It's an issue that no-one seems prepared to talk openly about and so someone has to. Hopefully, I will present these issues without offending anyone, or only offending people who are unwilling to think critically about the issues.

We live in a world where it is potentially offensive for a Gentile to opine on issues relating to Jewishness at all, so I need to say this. I am not anti-semitic. When I was a teenager, one of my favourite books was Kafka's The Trial; the Coen brothers are some of my favourite directors (second only to David Lynch); I love Neil Gaiman's work and Gaiman (although I didn't know this when I was fifteen) is Jewish. I am a fan of stand-up comedy and there have been many famous Jewish comedians, such as Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Andy Kaufman, Sarah Silverman, and of course Jon Stewart. Bill Maher's mother is Jewish and so he could identify as Jewish if he chose although, in the past, he has seemed to me to identify more strongly with the Irish side of his family. At my pub quiz yesterday, I found out that Harrison Ford's mother is Jewish which means Ford could also identify as Jewish if he chose to – this came as a complete surprise to me because Ford doesn't look Jewish at all.

As this introductory section indicates, there are lots of people in the public eye who are Jewish, or who have Jewish descent. In the world of literature this skewing is less apparent, but in the world of philosophy and theory it sometimes seems that there are more Jews than Gentiles producing important work. This is the case even though it is estimated that there are only seven million Jews living, for instance, in the US. Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Althusser, Derrida, Chomsky, Pinker, and Butler, among many, many others are Jewish. The host of Majority Report, Sam Seder, is Jewish and Sam Harris's mother is Jewish. A day or two ago, I saw on CNN Fareed Zakaria interviewing a Standford neuroscience professor about how we're neurologically wired to divide the world into 'us' and 'them' groups – inevitably, of course, this professor turned out to be Jewish.

Given the enormous influence Jewish intellectuals, who tend to be leftist and often radical, have over the intellectual scene, we might look for an explanation. There is an argument from evolutionary psychology that Jews simply tend to be cleverer than other ethnic groups. The argument, if I remember it correctly, is that in the couple of millennia after the diaspora, Ashkenazi Jews, who were consigned to ghettos in European cities, survived by taking on jobs such as money-lending and legal work; selective pressure acted upon the Jewish population, making them genetically more intelligent than Gentiles. This argument resembles in some ways another argument from evolutionary psychology, that during the centuries when slavery existed in the United States, white slave-owners deliberately bred intelligence out of their black slaves, treating them like domesticated animals, and that consequently African-Americans are genetically stupider than white Americans. I find both arguments abhorrent. One of my core beliefs, a belief so foundational I never even question it, is that intelligence and success is the result of complex cultural factors, even luck, rather than DNA. Intelligence isn't genetic. It seems to me that the current fashion among theorists to embrace evolutionary biology is pernicious and possibly evil, a reappearance of eugenic ideas we associate with the Nazis. I will return to this idea later in the post.

How can we explain Jewish success without attributing it to some kind of hereditary cluster of intelligence genes? We can talk about upbringing, nurture rather than nature. Consider Jewish comedians. It is possible, even likely, that Jon Stewart watched Woody Allen films when he was young, and consequently decided  as a result that comedy was a viable occupation for a young Jewish kid. Likewise, other Jewish kids, aware of the strong intellectual tradition already in place among Jews, decided that philosophy was a viable vocation over, say, police work or basketball. People choose which jobs they want to pursue, and role modelling plays a strong part in these decisions. There is a long history of argumentation and disputation in the Jewish community, and this also plays a role. Furthermore, although this sounds like a stereotype, I believe it true that Jewish parents push their children extremely hard to succeed academically, that Jewish kids are steered, if not towards stand-up comedy and philosophy, then towards professions like the law, banking or medicine. Another ingredient is what modern Marxists call 'cultural capital'. In the Hollywood film industry, getting ahead often involves networking, having the right friends, and if a Jewish kid has a Jewish uncle in an important position, he or she is more likely to get the job. This sounds like a conspiracy theory but it is a simple truth about the way the world works. In the entertainment industry, as so often in life, it isn't what you know but who you know that makes the difference.

In the introduction to this post, I said that I wanted to talk about the effect a perceived Jewish dominance within the philosophical field and the entertainment industry has on Gentiles (where I am using the word Gentile to refer to anyone who isn't Jewish). Many people who become dimly aware of this Jewish hegemony (for want of a better word), but who don't critically enquire into its causes, can end up believing in a Jewish conspiracy a la "the protocols of Zion". Other Gentiles however take the exact opposite tack – many, often liberal, react to it by forming the secret wish to be Jewish. I have felt the same way myself, and I have often intuited signs of the same wish in others, often in those close to me. This strange tension, a world of Gentiles who want to be Jewish and Jews who, because of their opposition to Israel, don't want to be, is explored in the novel The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.

I might digress for a moment to make a possibly interesting observation. The Matrix is a very Jewish film. The secret settlement of those who have escaped the Matrix is called "Zion" and the myth among the escapees of a chosen one who will appear to save them is simply the Jewish myth of a Messiah yet to arrive.

This brings me to my second topic: Israel. I cannot stress the following point strongly enough. It is possible to oppose Israeli policies without being antisemitic. This should be obvious but it isn't. I have had trouble tracking down the source of this info but, as I understand it, a few years ago the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) defined antisemitism in such a way as to suggest that any criticism of Israel was antisemitic; the UK Labour Party refused to accept this definition, resulting in an enormous schism in the party and controversy in the media. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has been embroiled in charges of antisemitism in part, I understand, because he supports Palestinian self-determination. I don't know enough to wade into this issue in British politics but this example is a representative example of a tendency of some Zionists to characterise all critics of Israel as Jew-haters (and those Jews, like Noam Chomsky, who venture to criticise Israel as "self-hating"). The issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations is often presented in black-and-white terms, that you are either for Israel or against it. Sam Harris, for instance, who is something of an apologist for Israel, argues that the choice people have is between supporting Israel or supporting Hamas with its avowed goal of destroying the State of Israel and establishing an Islamic State. This is a false dichotomy; one can criticise Israel without seeking its dissolution. Can't we have something in-between? A solution that works for both Jews and Palestinians? The best solution is for the Israeli and Palestinian territories to merge, forming a multi-ethnic, democratic, secular state, like pretty much every other state in the world, in which Palestinians and Israelis (together with the other Arabs and Christians who live in the region) have equal citizenship rights and are treated the same under the law. I hope I am not altogether misrepresenting Chomsky when I say that this is his preferred solution. A second more feasible if less utopian answer is the 'two-state solution', something the UN has argued for since 1974, in which Israel and Palestine exist side by side as two sovereign nations. Many Palestinians support this proposal, although only if the countries return to their pre-1967 borders. Whatever the solution, it necessarily involves giving Palestinians greater self-determination and rights. To support Israel, as Harris does, is a vote for the status quo, for the current mess, for everlasting occupation of the Palestinian Territories. It seems Harris, and the Israeli Right as led by Netanyahu, really want the Palestinians to somehow just simply disappear.

As the previous paragraph suggests, I tend to side with the Palestinians. The reporting I have read and documentaries I have seen over the years have suggested to me that these people, in a way stateless, live under unbearable conditions. For every Palestinian kid photographed throwing stones and splashed over the World section of the newspaper during an Intifada (there hasn't been one for a while), there's a Palestinian kid shot by an Israeli soldier. The daily mistreatment of Palestinians doesn't often make the news. What does is the building of illegal but tolerated Orthodox Jewish settlements on land which should be Palestinian – problematic not least because the Gaza Strip is the most densely populated area on Earth. Last year, under the leadership of Netanyahu, the Knesset passed legislation saying “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”. Arabic, formerly an official language, was stripped of this status; Hebrew became the the sole official language. I include a link to interesting article written by an Israeli Arab which talks about how the system in Israel legally discriminates against minorities (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/13/netanyahu-israel-palestinian).

Israel seems to me a right-wing, even fascist state, and so it is ironic that it is supported by Jews around the world who tend to be liberal and left-wing. The madness of the current situation is exemplified by a fascinating factoid. I read a survey last year that found that only two countries in the world liked Donald Trump more than Barack Obama. One was Russia. The other was Israel. Netanyahu is currently campaigning for re-election and posters pasted across the cities of Israel show him and Trump together, demonstrating, I guess, that Israel has strong friends. In a Youtube clip, Slavoj Zizek talks about how Netanyahu has courted far-right, populist governments in Eastern Europe, exploiting what Zizek describes as "zionist antisemitism". Zionist antisemites don't mind Jews so long as the Jews "go back to where they came from" (i.e. Israel). Zizek cites the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as an example of zionist antisemitism. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE6VWYwO-4Y)

This madness, the fundamental contradiction in the Jewish community on this issue, filters into the whole global culture as a result of the influence Jewish thinkers and performers have on the world. After Charlottesville, many in the media sought to portray Trump as a Nazi because he was supported by neo-Nazis – but Trump himself isn't antisemitic, even though the media wanted him to be. Yes, he is racist (against black people) but his adored son-in-law is a devout Jew and his daughter converted to Judaism. Breibart News, the far-right publication involved to some large extent in the election of Trump which is described by Wikipedia as advancing neo-Nazi ideas, was originally founded to be "unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel". Trump likes autocrats, likes Putin and seems to even like Kim Jong Un – he seems to want to align himself with other autocratic, populist leaders. And to some extent Netanyahu can be considered one of those.

On his show last week, Bill Maher defended Israel by saying in effect that, yes, the Palestinians are suffering but that they brought it on themselves. I fail to see how the Palestinians asked to be occupied and have their human rights taken away. I think Maher, like Harris, believes that the Palestinians want to destroy the Israeli state and so the occupation is justified. But if this was ever true, is it still true today? Is there not perhaps an appetite for a two-state solution among Left-leaning Israelites and moderate Palestinians? The arguments in support of Israel depend on a certain way of characterising Palestinians and Israel's neighbouring Middle Eastern countries, on the idea that Israel is fighting for its survival. But is this characterisation necessarily true? In order to find a solution to a social problem, we need to see the best in other people, recognise our shared humanity with those we disagree with on some matters or have had conflict with, enter into constructive dialogue. We need to find common ground. Northern Ireland shows that progress, peace processes, are possible – although the Israel-Palestine conflict is arguably much worse than the situation that existed in Northern Ireland. Yet it certainly doesn't help to deliberately inflame tensions as Netanyahu is doing by allowing the building of illegal settlements and by making the Israeli Arab minority into second-class citizens.

We are at a very worrying point in history and nobody seems willing to talk about it openly. First, as the Trump phenomenon and Breitbart News shows, there seems to be a bizarre alliance between neo-Nazis and Zionists. (Many American Evangelical Christians are also Zionists because they believe supporting Israel will hasten the Second Coming of Christ, but this isn't something I want to go into here.) Second, although the Jewish community presents itself as unified and cohesive, it is riven down the middle between Right-wingers and Left-wingers, between Trump supporters and Democrats. Third, the availability of biographical information about celebrities on the Internet means it has become far easier to learn who has Jewish heritage and who doesn't, with consequences I won't speculate on here. Lastly, all of this has coincided with the rise in popularity of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology in the universities. Although evolutionary psychology is championed by fundamentally decent people like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, I view it as inherently dangerous;  it licenses the fascist idea that some people were born intellectually superior to other people. All of this contributes to the schizoid nature of the political discourse today.

Israel was founded in 1948. Before then there was a trickle of Jewish immigrants settling in Palestine, setting up kibbutzim and living alongside their Palestinian neighbours. I understand that Chomsky views this period in Jewish history very positively, and that the social organisation of these early communes influenced his later political beliefs. The establishment of a Jewish state however, in 1948, could be considered the last gasp of the old colonial system, a system in which Europeans in London or Brussels could decide which imperial power had governorship of which parcel of land by drawing lines on a map. The establishment of the state of Israel rather ignored the fact that people were already living there. Now, although Zionists argue that the current debate concerns the right of Israel to exist, that Palestinians and others constitute an existential threat to Israel, I think whether the establishment of Israel was a good thing or a bad thing is irrelevant. Israel has been around for seventy years and has a population of 8.7 million. Israel isn't going to disappear, and rational opponents of Israeli policy know this. The issue is, rather, what form will Israel take in the future? And what form will Palestine take?

The IHRA, in its definition of antisemitism, says that comparing Zionism to Nazism is antisemitic. It is also antisemitic to suggest that Jews have a 'double allegiance', that they are loyal not only to whichever country they live in, but also to Israel. With respect the first stipulation I turn to my friends Monty Python. In The Life of Brian, a scene was filmed in which Eric Idle played a Jew in a Nazi uniform declaring his desire for "an ethnically pure Jewish state". This scene didn't make it into the final cut, perhaps because in a film that was always going to be controversial, this was a step too far. Or perhaps because it wasn't funny enough. With respect to the second stipulation, a little while ago I found an essay on the Net, an essay that was considered, tempered, and I think objective, that pointed out that in Jewish schools in America, kids are taught to regard support for Israel as part of their Jewish identity. Unfortunately I can't remember where I found this essay but it seemed to be just stating facts. Overly strict definitions of antisemitism have a way of stifling debate. I have said before in this blog that sometimes I only work out what I am trying to say by saying it, and this is the point in the post where I articulate where my logic has led me. Although I tentatively raised the possibility of a two-state solution, I think that in the current climate this is not likely at all. Within Israel and within the US, the Jewish community has enormous money and clout and, from a Marxist perspective, it is not in their self-interest to support the oppressed. In Israel, this means not supporting the Palestinians. In the US, it means not voting Democrat. The madness in the US in its variety of forms is I think symptomatic of a seismic shift going on underground, a shift in which the Jewish community stops predominantly voting Democrat and starts voting Republican instead. Trump's vociferous support for Israel and Netanyahu is a shameless attempt to secure the Jewish vote, and it may just succeed. It is a shift that will leave traditional lefty Jews like George Soros, Bernie Sanders, and Barbara Streisand behind. Maher gets things wrong from time to time (who doesn't?) but when he said that Trump's election was a "slow motion right wing coup" I think this is what he was talking about.