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May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
May 3, 2002
Arundhati Roy
Democracy and
Religious Fascism
Wayne
Madsen
Dispatch
from Paris:
Le Pen's Strange Coalition
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
Food/Tobacco/Booze
Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 2, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Rep.
Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians
Rami Kaplan
Israeli Soldiers Resisting
the Occupation:
Why We Refuse to Fight
Carol
Norris
Subterranean
Mini-Nuke Blues
Bernard Weiner
A Peek Inside Colin Powell's Personal
Diary
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich:
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
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The New Crusade:
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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May
6, 2002
The Paradoxes of Israel
By John Chuckman
The creation of Israel marked the application
of a peculiarly nineteenth century solution, the founding of
a state based on ethnic or religious identity, to an ancient
problem. The problem was, of course, anti-Semitism, something
that has dogged the Jewish people for centuries and which reached
its full, nightmarish expression in the Holocaust.
But the Holocaust was itself the ultimate,
nightmarish expression of nineteenth century nationalism. Germany
for Germans, Jews, Slavs and Gypsies representing unwelcome grafts
from other civilizations, if you will.
The nineteenth century was the boom time
for nationalism in Europe. It really was the century that defined
what many mean by the words "nation" and "nationalism"
today. Modern Italy was born, modern Germany, Greece, and others.
The idea of a nation state defined largely by a shared language
and culture was a new development in the modern era where before
empires and kingdoms regarded only the extent of their territory
as important and often encompassed a great diversity of people.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, lasting right into
the fierce age of nationalism, was a true polyglot state.
Zionists in nineteenth century Europe
felt the same nationalistic influences and wrote of the rebirth
of a Jewish state. After decades of faltering efforts, the Holocaust
gave the needed impulse for this rebirth of Israel as a safe
haven for Jews.
Oddly, early in the Third Reich, the
Nazis had considerable difficulty agreeing on what defined a
Jew for purposes of the infamous 1935 Nuremberg Laws. After years
of preaching hatred against Jews during their rise to power,
you might think the Nazis clearly understood exactly what the
object of all that hatred was, but that proved not to be the
case.
Under the compromise reached between
various factions of the party, "three-quarter Jews,"
those with three Jewish grandparents, were considered Jews. "Half-Jews,"
those with two Jewish grandparents and two "Aryan"
grandparents, were considered Jews only if they practiced the
faith. "Quarter Jews" were considered as non-Jews.
Attempting to rationalize the irrational always leads to absurd,
not to say dangerous, results.
There was some resemblance in the Nazis'
formulations to those now-ludicrous efforts of scholastic doctors
in the Middle Ages trying to settle such matters as a pinhead's
capacity for accommodating angels. Later, in the bloody torrents
of the Christian Reformation and Counterreformation, efforts
to draft such rules or formulas became deadly matters, determining
who was a heretic to be burned alive.
And yet, in a bitter paradox, Israel
perpetuates a version of this thinking. A conception of just
who is a Jew is necessary because all those regarded as Jews
have the right to immigrate to Israel and to receive generous
assistance in settling there; however, as with any such conception,
it suffers disagreements and adjustments over time, a recent
one involving whether to recognize certain African groups holding
to ancient variations of Jewish belief. Moreover, inside Israel
there are great disagreements about rules set by one group of
Jews, fundamentalists, governing important parts of the lives
of other groups of Jews, as say Reform Jews.
There is yet another paradox. How can
a state, defined solely by the religious and/or ethnic identity
of its citizens, function rationally in the emerging world of
globalization? This question would not be pertinent were Israel
a third-world place such as Afghanistan where a modern economy
might not develop for a very long time. But Israel is, in many
respects, a modern nation, integrated into the global economy,
especially through its attachment with the United States, and
subject to the economic and social forces operating on all modern
states.
In the mid to late twentieth century,
the very concept of the nation state in the advanced world underwent
perceptible change that appears likely to generate still more
profound change. The United States long legally barred Asian
and certain other immigration to its shores. Australia, right
up into the 1960s, had the reputation of not accepting black
immigrants. These kinds of barriers to the movement of skilled
and ambitious people, and there were many of them, are now frowned
upon by the entire advanced world. Human society has made some
real progress.
Today, the economically advanced states
of Europe are becoming diverse in their population makeup. Whether
it's Turks in Germany or Arabs in France or Albanians in Italy,
the European states are starting to follow the pattern of immigrant-founded
states like Canada or the United States (and, yes, they are experiencing
social turmoil always associated with this change). There are
many reasons for this, including the settlement of millions of
displaced persons after the war, generous policies in recent
decades for accepting refugees from various conflicts, static
or declining natural rates of population growth, fairly ready
accommodation of third-world migration for jobs in periods of
intense postwar growth, and the increased movement of people
associated with foreign investment.
Over and above these changes in individual
states, the European community clearly seems destined before
very long to become a single federated state, whose many national
groups will provide a population of great diversity.
The trend seems clear. A hundred or so
years from now, no modern nation will look much as it does today.
The nineteenth century concept of a single ethnic group defining
a state will have dated as badly as the sixteenth century idea
that marriage may alter a dukedom's boundaries.
So what will be the future meaning and
relevance of a state defined solely by a religious identity?
There have certainly been other states of this nature in the
world, but not ones that are a part of the advanced world. Theocracy
is universally associated with backward places, places not subject
to the economic, social, and political flows of an open society
in a globalized world.
Will Israel pass through the twenty first
century, with all the revolutionary forces of globalization and
a close attachment to the world's biggest globalizer, the United
States, remaining a small state defined by religious identity?
Strictly from a theoretical point of view, this does not seem
likely and may even prove impossible.
Will Israel instead become a fifty-first
state of the United States? Despite frequent assertions that
Israel is a sovereign state not answering to America, already,
in many respects, Israel approaches such a status, de facto.
The American government gives roughly five hundred dollars a
year for each Israeli citizen, an amount that more closely resembles
the transfers of a federal government than foreign aid, plus
a great many other forms of valuable assistance, including technology
transfers, intelligence sharing, defense arrangements, loan guarantees,
ready access to top leaders, and access to American markets;
a package of benefits unlike that extended to any other nation.
And the U.S. places no restrictions on a huge private flow of
assistance and information, a practice it does not follow with
a number of other nations.
Of course, under the American Constitution,
the nature of many of Israel's policies and the rules governing
important parts of her social life immediately would be struck
down as unconstitutional. But, even if Israel does not become
a fifty-first state, how can she ever have a meaningful Bill
or Charter of Rights, something she does not now have, if her
raison d'etre is to provide a home essentially for one kind of
people?
Now, advocacy of a Palestinian state
also represents nineteenth century thinking. This is a very small
group of people with a very small territory of limited resources.
Such a state's population/resource ratio must necessarily be
a weak one. The rational solution to the conflict would be a
single state embracing all these people, yet this contradicts
Israel's concept of itself. Nevertheless, over the long term
and reflecting global trends, can there be much doubt that this
is exactly what will ultimately emerge?
The idea of Israel surrounded by a wall,
a solution touted by some Israeli extremists, is subject to every
point of rational criticism that applied to the Berlin Wall;
Israel and the Palestinian lands, like the two parts of Berlin,
have too many natural and intimate connections to ever be truly
separated from each other.
And what is the attraction of living
in a garrison state holding an unwanted portion of the area's
population at arm's length indefinitely? Without huge American
subsidies, this would be almost impossible even today.
Of course, we have still the distinct
possibility of the Palestinians being driven out of the lands
remaining to them.
A report in The Daily Telegraph recently
quoted an Israeli minister saying Mr. Sharon has a secret plan
to annex about half the West Bank territories, leaving the Palestinian
entity as a truly feeble foundation for a state. If true, this
should surprise no one since the right wing of Israeli politics,
despite constant publicity in the United States about a tenuous
and undefined "peace process," has always opposed the
creation of a Palestinian state, has always desired to annex
these territories, and has always desired to see the Palestinians
pushed out.
A second recent report - or as it may
well be, a second "trial balloon" - in The Sunday Telegraph
has Martin van Creveld, an Israeli historian, saying that Mr.
Sharon has a secret plan to push the entire West Bank population
out of their homes and into Jordan under cover of Mr. Bush's
expected attack on Iraq, or in the event of a major terrorist
attack by the Palestinians. This would be done, not by door-to-door
fighting, but by a moving artillery barrage pushing two million
people to refuge beyond the Jordan River. Of course, no Arab
country is in a military position to effectively oppose such
an action, and the situation of the Palestinians themselves is
one of utter vulnerability.
This would not be without supporters,
and influential ones, in the United States. Mr. Dick Armey, Republican
of Texas, for example, in a recent interview managed to say he
would support ethnic cleansing of the West Bank without ever
actually using that ugly expression.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of the Jewish
state is that today Jews live in many places of greater safety,
stability, and comfort than Israel. In Canada, the United States,
the United Kingdom, and many other places, Jews flourish as an
integral part of society. This was not, of course, always the
case, but it is now. So much so that it is a recurring theme
amongst some American Jews that intermarriage with non-Jews,
something quite common in America, represents a danger to Jewish
identity.
The intellectual contribution of Jews
to Western society has been profound, with thinkers in the twentieth
century alone like Freud and Einstein contributing major parts
of the century's intellectual framework and ferment. So, too,
the moral contribution of Jews with many great teachers and humanitarians.
What a final, ugly paradox to see a man like Mr. Sharon, whose
talents appear to be brutality and dissimulation, regarded as
a leader of the Jewish people.
John Chuckman
is a columnist with YellowTimes.
He can be reached at: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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