Was Zionism a case of 'national liberation'? (Walzer vs. Falk)

National liberation movements are usually thought of as movements against colonial rule.  Although Zionism doesn't fit that template, Michael Walzer in The Paradox of Liberation (discussed here) nonetheless treats Zionism as a national liberation movement.  The implicit (or sometimes explicit) justifying steps are that: (1) the Jews are a people or "nation"; (2) their condition of 'exile' constituted a form of 'national oppression'; (3) Zionism as a political movement sought to end the condition of exile and hence counts as a case of national liberation.  

In a critical essay on The Paradox of Liberation published online last year, Richard Falk argued that since the establishment of the state of Israel involved, among other things, the (unjust) displacement of Palestinians from land they occupied, Zionism was not a national-liberation movement in the sense that the Indian and Algerian independence movements were.  Falk acknowledged Ben-Gurion's statement in 1947 to a meeting of his political party (quoted by Walzer on p.99 of Paradox) that "[i]n our state there will be non-Jews as well, and all of them will be equal citizens, equal in everything without any exception, that is, the state will be their state as well."  However, Falk wrote: 

In my view, it is questionable in the extreme whether this idealistic goal ever represented the actual intentions of Zionist leaders. It should be evident to all that such egalitarianism was never expressive of Israeli policies and practices on the ground from even before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Walzer for his part (Paradox, p.100) judged that "[t]he invasion of the new state in 1948 by five Arab armies must count as one of the reasons, perhaps the crucial reason, why none of the governments over which Ben-Gurion presided lived up to the commitments he described." [See the discussion in the comment thread.]

My own position may fall somewhere in between Walzer's and Falk's, though I'm also not entirely convinced that the actual gulf between them is quite as big as Falk thinks (though it may be).  Certainly they differ on various historical and normative questions, but it's not clear that their views on the current way forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are all that radically different.  But to hash these issues out thoroughly would require too long a post than I have time for right now and also a more detailed knowledge of the relevant history than I can command without some substantial research (which I have no present intention of undertaking).

Book note

Have just become aware of a book that might be of interest to some readers of this blog: John Judis, Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.  The paperback edition came out last February. (Amazon link.)

A Palestinian state as absorber of anger

A Palestinian official on the radio today, when asked about the motives driving the latest wave of violence (including knife attacks on Israelis by a small number of Palestinians, followed by Israeli response), said the motives lay in 48 years of illegal occupation, coupled with feelings of hopelessness on the part of the younger generation.  The official compared this incipient 'third intifada' in that respect to the Arab Spring, and he compared Netanyahu to Mubarak.

Whatever one thinks of that suggested analogy or parallel, there is one obvious, glaring difference: the anger of the Egyptian protesters from 2011 on was directed at their own government, whereas that of Palestinians, as in the present moment, is directed outward, toward a government of occupation, a government not their own in any sense.  Hidden in this very obvious distinction is an implication one wonders whether Israel's leaders have ever fully grasped: namely, that once a sovereign Palestinian state is established, it would become the target at which its citizens would be most likely to direct whatever anger and frustration they might have about unfulfilled hopes or promises.  The longer that Israel continues the occupation, the longer the Palestinians exist in a basically stateless condition,  the longer it will be before there comes a time when Palestinians' anger is directed, in the first instance, where anger is typically first directed: i.e., at one's own government.

I wonder, in other words, whether Israeli leaders have ever taken an unabashedly pragmatic, self-interested view of a sovereign Palestinian state as an absorber of anger, which is what, among other things, it would be.  After an initial period of euphoria, once the state got down to the difficult business of governing and trying to improve its citizens' lives, it would become responsible or accountable in a way that the Palestinian Authority, despite its degree of autonomy in certain spheres, has never been.  This is presumably just one of several ways in which the establishment of a sovereign, universally recognized Palestinian state would benefit not only ordinary Palestinians (in psychic if not necessarily material terms), but also ordinary Israelis.

Added later: Lest the opening of this post give the wrong impression, I assure readers that I'm fully aware that (individual) Israelis have committed violent acts against (individual) Palestinians (including recently) and not just the other way around; on the level of individuals, the violence has flowed both ways, even while on the level of collectives it has been highly asymmetrical and unequal.  My basic position on the conflict should be fairly clear from previous posts; those readers in search of posts that consist solely of impassioned denunciations might be well advised to look elsewhere, since although I sometimes appreciate impassioned polemic, I don't do it all that often here.

An indirect route to the two-state solution

An article in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs (Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon, "The Death and Life of the Two-State Solution") argues that the best way for Palestinians to get their own state "is, paradoxically, to give up on trying to get one."

The authors suggest that one thing Israeli officialdom would like even less than a viable Palestinian state is the roughly 4.5 million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza incorporated into Israel as citizens with voting rights.  Hence Palestinians should push for such incorporation, saying that what they really want is to be Israeli citizens (which is apparently true for much of the younger generation; Rumley and Tibon cite a 2013 poll showing that only 48 percent of the 18-to-28 age group favor two states).  As a result, the two-state solution would appear in a new light to Israelis: i.e., as the preferable alternative to Palestinian incorporation.

Would this approach work? I don't know, and I don't agree with every single statement in the article.  Still, the piece is interesting.  The concluding passage:

In such a situation...this [two-state] outcome could credibly be presented to Israeli voters not as a soft act of justice or charity...but as a hard act of self-preservation.  Dov Weisglass, who was [Ariel] Sharon's chief of staff during the Gaza disengagement negotiations, has said that Sharon presented the pullout to Israeli voters in "fluent Likudish."  Sharon did not conjure up fantasies of everlasting peace; he framed the decision as necessary for Israel's survival.  A pullout from the West Bank will need to be explained in similar terms.  Only then will the threats [or claimed threats--LFC] that come with it stop trumping the supposed opportunities of some distant peace accord.

ETA: On a related issue, Tom Gregory at Duck of Minerva had a post on the UN report on last summer's Gaza war (here).

The alleged tilt to Iran

Col. Derek Harvey (Ret.), appearing recently on the PBS NewsHour, voiced some criticisms of U.S. policy in the Middle East:

Well, what I see happening in Iraq in particular — let’s take a look at that — the Abadi regime there, along with Iranian support, has given free rein to Shia militias who are conducting atrocities almost on a daily basis. And they openly proclaim the U.S. is supporting their operations, which feeds into Sunni Arab paranoia and supports the ISIS narrative about a divide and that the U.S. is aligned against Sunni Arabs in the region. So that hurts us in many ways. The U.S. has a choice here. We could declare no-fly zones, no-go zones in Syria. We could have put more capability on the ground and shown some leadership and commitment, which is what Sunni Arabs are looking for in the region, be they in the Gulf or in Ankara, in Turkey. But we have yet to really show real commitment.

The urge to have done something more in Syria is understandable, but the idea that "we could have put more capability on the ground" seems a non-starter given Obama's (also understandable) determination not to involve the U.S. in any substantial way in another ground war in the region, a determination reflected, albeit perhaps too vaguely, in the language of the proposed authorization for the use of military force just submitted to Congress.  Also, if ISIS is so concerned about appealing to Sunnis and playing up the narrative of the Sunni-Shia divide, their murder of the Jordanian pilot, who was (I assume) a Sunni Muslim, does not seem designed to further that goal, to put it mildly. 

Col. Harvey also said this:

Well, Sunni Arabs, be they in the Gulf, in Jordan, you know, in countries of Syria and Iraq, the Sunni Arab communities, Turkey, they want to see an effort directed at the Assad regime and a check on Shia militia and Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the U.S. administration is focused on rapprochement with Iran, and acknowledging Tehran’s regional hegemony in the process, and that alienates Sunni Arabs, Ankara, and as well impacts Tel Aviv in Israel. So, that creates real problems for us in mobilizing support, keeping people online, and having unity of effort.

First, the U.S. is not "acknowledging Tehran's regional hegemony"; the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Iran and Iran remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Trying to reach a nuclear deal does not equal recognizing Iran's regional hegemony.  

Second, the idea that the U.S.'s supposed focus on "rapprochement" with Iran "alienates" Sunni Arabs is overbroad: no doubt anything less than implacable hostility to the Iranian regime would displease some Sunni Arabs, but one need not be an expert on the region to find ridiculous the implication that all Sunnis feel this way.  "Sunni Arabs" are not a monolithic bloc, and although pan-Arabism is more or less defunct as a political movement, it only makes sense to assume that there are some political actors in the Arab world who still would rather work at overcoming their divisions than exacerbating them.  Who those actors are I'll leave to the regional experts, but I assume they exist, and for an analyst to go on TV and speak of "Sunni Arabs" as a bloc seems a disservice to American viewers.

As for all this "impact[ing] Tel Aviv": If the Israeli government had made any real progress on the Palestinian issue or shown itself open to genuine negotiations, it would have done more to reduce support for Iranian policies (and Hezbollah, and of course Hamas) in the region than anything else it could have done. Netanyahu's endless blustering about the (supposed) Iranian threat has accomplished nothing, except to confirm that the Israeli government is effectively clueless about its own long-term interests and how best to advance them. The main underlying problem for Israel's long-term security is Israeli policy w/r/t the Palestinian issue, not a supposed recognition by the U.S. of Iranian regional hegemony or the prospect of a nuclear Iran, which Netanyahu wrongly paints as some kind of apocalypse.

Lastly, and as already suggested, reducing everything analytically to the Shia-Sunni divide ignores that there are divisions within the 'camps,' and also other divisions.  As the Wash. Post noted in an editorial last month ("Headed Toward Chaos," Jan.13, 2015, p.A14), the conflict in Libya is mainly between "secular Sunnis [and] Islamists," a division that also "dominates the politics of Egypt, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories, and much of the rest of the Maghreb...."

In sum, the U.S. is not recognizing Iranian regional hegemony, and to put some kind of apocalyptic construction on U.S. efforts to relate to Iran in some way other than through unremitting hostility seems highly dubious.  Of course there must be ongoing concerns about the Iranian government's internal polices; it is hardly the model of a democratic, pluralist regime, and cases such as those of the Wash. Post reporter held for a long time in an Iranian jail deservedly garner attention.  Everyone remembers the Iranian regime's crackdown on demonstrations surrounding the 2009 election and the famous image of the young woman demonstrator beaten by regime-allied thugs and left to die in the streets.  However, the U.S. maintains relations with lots of governments that are human-rights abusers.  Anyway, Harvey's objections had nothing to do with Iran's domestic policies, so this whole line of discussion is of limited relevance to the interview.         

Noted

David McNally at New Politics (Jan. 30; link) mentions the new Greek government's decision to end its "military cooperation with Israel...if the blockade of Gaza is not lifted."  I wonder what Greece's "military cooperation with Israel" consisted of.  Not that this move will have any effect on Israeli policy, though it's laudable anyway.

Blaming 'manifest destiny'

In a case of timing so bad that it would seem close to unbelievable (not that any time would be good for this), the Netanyahu government has announced its intent to convert 1,000 acres of land on the West Bank into 'state land' (here).

The linked Wash. Post story has generated a torrent of comments, which at a glance appear to be mostly negative, not surprisingly. One somewhat history-challenged commenter insists the 19th-cent. U.S. doctrine of 'manifest destiny' is to blame for the current situation in the Mideast. Why? Well, according to this commenter the Zionist movement at the turn of the twentieth century must have taken its cue from the U.S.'s westward expansion and the concomitant displacement, resettling, brutalization, killing etc. of Native Americans. I asked this person if there is any evidence that Herzl or the other early Zionists were even aware of the phrase 'manifest destiny' or anything in detail about the U.S.'s westward expansion. (I'd be surprised if there were such evidence, though I'm not sure.) Anyway, drawing a straight line from the Trail of Tears to the displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 war and subsequently strikes me as -- how shall I put it? -- tenuous. (As if Israeli soldiers in 1948, when asked for their heroes, would have answered: "why, Andrew Jackson, of course.")    

"Intent" does not matter here

Based on the circumstances as reported here, the criticism of the IDF missile firing that killed ten people near a UN school is justified. Targeting three people on a motorcycle riding by a compound where civilians are lining up to buy food and other items amounts to an attack on civilians; the missile, according to the linked article, "hit the motorcycle" and then "crashed into the road," sending shrapnel flying "in every direction." The fact that the three people riding the motorcycle were the intended targets (and were apparently killed along with the others) does not matter, under standard notions of proportionality. So the UN Sec-Gen's statement ("a moral outrage and a criminal act") is justified.

(Note: Post edited slightly after initial posting.)

Update: Hank in comments has pointed out that the WaPo article, standing alone, does not provide enough info to determine whether this was a legal violation, because for that judgment one has to know what the personnel in the plane knew about the situation on the ground when they fired the missile. That point is right, although as I say in the comments it seems likely to me, as someone admittedly ignorant of jet-fighter technology, that the personnel in the plane either knew or could have informed themselves about what the situation on the ground was, i.e., that the motorcycle when they fired on it was passing a school with civilians standing outside.

Steven Cook on Israel, the PA, and Hamas

From S. Cook's blog post for The Times of Israel:

Instead of using the period after the 2012 cease-fire to help Abbas by giving him a political win and boosting his narrative about the promise of negotiations, Jerusalem did nothing. When Secretary of State John Kerry launched a push for peace in 2013, the Israeli government went along, but never gave Abbas anything he could use to close the gap between what he was telling Palestinians about talks and their objective reality, which unfortunately for the Palestinian Authority president included Jerusalem’s announcement of new settlement building and failure to honor its commitment to release Palestinian prisoners.

Y. Levy on Israel's casualty aversion

The latest headline from Gaza -- 60 Palestinians, 13 Israeli soldiers killed in the latest clash -- reminded me that I'd seen reviews of this book by Yagil Levy. A glance at the introduction confirms that the book was the author's dissertation. One of his arguments is that increased sensitivity to military casualties among the Israeli middle class helps explain the use of "excessive force" (the phrase is Levy's) in the 2009 Gaza offensive (Operation Cast Lead).

Les ouvriers français sont-ils 'coddled'?

Ici.
----
Unrelated link: violent clashes on the West Bank.

Comment on Butler

I left a comment at Crooked Timber on Judith Butler's remarks at the "boycott divest sanction" (BDS) event held at Brooklyn College (the text of her remarks is here). For background, see the recent posts on this at CT.

A.M. linkage

Pressman on whether the U.S. and Israel continue to share values.

D.C. Exile on sovereignty and drone strikes.

[added later] More on Israel: The Fall 2012 issue of Dissent, which I just bought in a bkstore, contains an exchange on Israel between James Rule and Michael Walzer, as well as a review-essay "Zionism and Its Discontents." Haven't read either one yet.    

Regional integration and the state, Mideast version

An interesting statement by Harriet Feinberg reproduced in this post suggests that "new governance structures" may be the eventual solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Israel, she writes, will need to become part of two "regional consortia," one consisting of Mideast countries, the other of those that border the Mediterranean. She cites the EU as a work-in-progress and also (implicitly) a model, as well as regional integration efforts in Africa and South America.

One of the notable features of existing regional arrangements, however, is that they have not replaced nation-states but rather built on top of them. Nor is there any strong evidence that the EU, for instance, is going to replace states in the foreseeable future. Thus while Feinberg's thoughts are to be welcomed, her vision of separate nation-states in the Mideast becoming as obsolete as Royal typewriters in 50 or 100 years is one that I would hesitate to place bets on as a prediction. Which is not to say that regional consortia are not a good idea; they almost certainly are. Whether they can solve the underlying problems in that region, however, is less clear.

A tale of two candidates and one ambassador

Gingrich and Romney are calling on the Obama administration to fire the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. His transgression, from what I can gather from this article, seems to have been (at most) perhaps some bad choice of words when describing the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on attitudes among Muslims in Europe.

The article quotes him as saying:

"Throughout the Muslim communities that I visit, and indeed throughout Europe, there is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes an all-too-growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East."

This quote doesn't excuse the anger, resentment, and "perhaps sometimes hatred"; it simply describes his perception. Ditto for another quote in the article in which Amb. Gutman appears to be simply describing the cycle of violence in the Middle East. His mistake was to use the charged word "anti-Semitism." (If he had made the same remarks without reference to "two forms of anti-Semitism," the remarks probably would have passed without too much notice.) The article says the ambassador has now issued a statement on his website, regretting that his remarks might have been misconstrued, etc.

In addition to the reactions from Romney and Gingrich, the remarks have prompted other reactions, including (again according to the Wash. Post article) a statement from the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors that refers to the "ongoing campaign by the White House to undermine Israel."

The U.S. gives Israel on the order of $3 billion a year, a very large portion of which, I believe, is military/security assistance. Obama administration officials, from Hillary Clinton on down, have said repeatedly that the U.S. is firmly and unwaveringly committed to ensuring that Israel maintains its QME (that's 'qualitative military edge'). Pres. Obama himself has made this clear on more than one occasion. The Obama administration wasted (in retrospect) about a year-and-a-half or so urging Israel to curtail construction of settlements. There was a brief-ish moratorium, after which settlement construction resumed (though perhaps at a slower pace than before). The admin appointed former Sen. George Mitchell its special envoy to the region tasked with bringing the conflict to a resolution, as he had in N. Ireland. Sen. Mitchell butted his head against brick walls for a while and then resigned. As long as the $3 billion per year remains untouchable, which it does because Congress sees to that, nothing the Obama administration says can in any way "undermine" Israel because everyone understands that the administration's words, unlike some words in international politics, are empty. No leverage will be brought to bear in connection with them. Since the Six Day War, Israel has been primus inter pares among U.S. allies. This has been true no matter who is in the White House and no matter what they have said about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The word "undermining" in the statement quoted seems to mean "ineffectually disagreeing with certain aspects of Israeli government policy while tacitly communicating that such disagreement is indeed ineffectual because it will not be accompanied by any actions of consequence."

There are very good reasons for the U.S. to support Israel. Whether there are good reasons for the U.S. to support Israel in the particular way that it does is a legitimate subject of public debate (although if you try to debate it you will have all kinds of accusations leveled at you; viz. Walt and Mearsheimer). In any case, the charge that the Obama administration has an "ongoing campaign" to "undermine" Israel is, to put it mildly, groundless.

France votes 'yes' on UNESCO seat for Palestine

Glancing through this AP story on the vote giving the Palestinian Authority full membership in UNESCO, what really jumped out at me was that France voted in favor. The article calls this a surprise. I suppose on some level it was, but France, no matter what party holds its presidency, has long prided itself on having an independent foreign policy. Sarkozy brought France back into NATO's integrated command a few years ago (and France took a lead role in the recent Libya campaign); however, this vote is a signal, if any were needed, that the Sarkozy government will follow its own course on certain issues. The U.S. reaction, predictably, was to call the PA's admission to UNESCO membership "regrettable" and "premature" and to cut off its funding to UNESCO, which a law requires it to do in these circumstances, apparently. Sigh.

Don't write off 'people power' in ME just yet

Looking at events in Syria and Yemen, Jackson Diehl asserts that "people power [in the Middle East] isn't working." The judgment seems premature and much of the rest of the column rather weird. Of course, this is the same columnist who said that the PA's bid for statehood at the UN was tantamount to a declaration of war against Israel.

What happened to the Palestinian statehood thing, btw? The General Assembly's September session is long over (isn't it?) so something should have been voted on in the way of enhanced observer status. If it was reported on, however, I missed it. Haven't been following the right sites, evidently. (A blogger confessing ignorance -- my my, what is the world coming to?)

Koch's role in the NY special election

I hadn't read much about the recent election to fill Anthony Weiner's NY congressional seat, so it was not until glancing through this piece that I became aware of Ed Koch's apparently key role in supporting the Republican, Bob Turner, who won. I find it difficult, or I should say impossible, to come up with a polite word to describe my reaction to Koch's views on Israel/Palestine as described in the linked article. So in an act of restraint I will let people read it and arrive at their own judgments.

I'm out of here. Have a nice weekend.

The case for (another) UNSC res. on Israel-Palestine

From Telhami & Goldstein's WaPo op-ed:

What would such a resolution include? Two states, based on the 1967 borders, with comparable mutually agreed swaps. Israel, as a state of the Jewish people and all its citizens, and Palestine as a state of the Palestinian people and all its citizens. The capital of Israel in West Jerusalem and the capital of Palestine in East Jerusalem. Mutual security arrangements to be negotiated, including possible deployment of international peacekeeping forces. And the Palestinian refugee problem to be resolved in a manner that respects the refugees’ legitimate rights, taking into account previous U.N. resolutions and the principle of the two-state solution outlined above.

I'm not entirely sure what the last sentence means, practically speaking. And hadn't the resolution better also say something about equitable arrangements re natural resources (e.g., water)?

Palestine at the UN: overblown warnings

Daniel Kurtzer, on the NewsHour last night:

The second, more serious concern has to do with the possibility that the Palestinians will use their new U.N. status to gain standing in international legal institutions such as the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice and to transform what has been a diplomatic process into a legal process of holding settlements illegal, settlers, Israeli soldiers and so forth coming under the jurisdiction of these international institutions.

And this could lead to some very dire consequences down the road.

I doubt it. Unless I'm much mistaken, the settlements have already been held illegal, for all the difference that's made. As for Israeli soldiers coming under the jurisdiction of the ICC, doesn't that depend on whether Israel signed the ICC statute? Which I'm reasonably sure it didn't.

I think this talk of dire consequences is much overblown. Moreover, as Jon Western pointed out in a recent Duck of Minerva post, to call the Palestinian move at the UN 'unilateral' is somewhat odd. In the official Israeli view, anything that takes place outside the framework of the currently non-existent peace process is 'unilateral,' hence to be opposed. This is a rather silly use of the term 'unilateral'.

As Robert Malley went on to note in the same NewsHour interview, Abbas is committed to this now and would face a great deal of criticism internally if he didn't pursue it. Far from foreclosing future negotiations, enhanced observer status for the PA at the UN could be just what is needed to get things moving again in the moribund 'peace process'.