Mark Braverman
The Jewish People, Zionism, and the Question of Justice
Mark Braverman, Ph.D.
When I was a boy in the 1950s attending Hebrew School in Philadelphia, we would receive little cardboard folders with slots for
dimes distributed by the Jewish National Fund. On the cover was a
picture of a tree being planted by handsome, tanned people in shorts. When the card was full, you sent it in
and in return received a certificate with your name on and a bigger picture of
a tree, which was the tree you had planted in Israel. It was fun and it was a thrill – I was
reclaiming the homeland. I saw pictures of kibbutzim and orange
groves filling the valleys and dreamt of going there someday.
Four decades later, now a middle-aged man, I saw pictures of Israeli bulldozers
uprooting three hundred year-old olive trees and Jewish soldiers restraining
Arab villagers crying hysterically over the destruction of their
groves. I traveled to the West
Bank – Israeli occupied Palestine – and saw the hillsides denuded of trees to build concrete
Jewish settlement cities. I saw Arab houses leveled and gardens
taken to make way for a 30 foot-high concrete wall cutting through Palestinian
cities and village fields. I saw that this was wrong. I
didn’t buy the story that this was for defense. I could see that it
was a lie.
When I returned to the United States and began to talk about my horror, sadness and deep
concern over what I had seen, I was told by many of my fellow Jews that I must
not talk like this. I was informed that this makes me an enemy of
the Jewish people and that I was opening the way for the next
Holocaust. I was told by many Jews that I was disloyal to my people, that I had “gone over” to the “Palestinian
side.” One Jewish rabbinical student informed his colleagues that I
was obviously a convert to Christianity “masquerading” as a Jew in order to
cause the destruction of the Jewish people. I have spoken about my
experiences before many groups, almost all of them in churches. I
have yet to speak in a synagogue. I am trying hard to make sense out
of this and to figure out a way forward. Here is what I have figured
out so far.
Jewish History: Survival and its Shadow
Zionism was the answer to the anti-Semitism of Christian Europe. The failure,
despite the Enlightenment, to establish Jews as an emancipated, accepted group
in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the rise of political
anti-Semitism in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century gave birth to
political Zionism under the leadership of Theodore Herzl. Zionism
expressed the powerful drive of the Jewish people to establish ourselves as a
nation among other nations, with a land of our own and the ability to achieve
self-determination. This is why, in sermons from synagogue pulpits,
in lectures on Jewish history, in classroom lessons for small children, and in
spirited discussions about the Israel-Palestine question, you will so often
here the preamble “throughout the centuries…,” followed by a description of the
suffering of the Jews at the hands of our oppressors. Indeed, it’s
in our liturgy, notably in the Passover Seder. The story of Jewish
survival despite constant persecution is in many ways our theme song -- it’s in our cultural DNA, it’s the mantra of
our peoplehood. It runs deep.
This unique Jewish quality is not the product of some cultural aberration or
collective character flaw. Developing this particular brand of
“character armor” has been part of our survival throughout long ages of
persecution, marginalization, and demonization. We survived, in
part, by creating rituals, habits and attitudes of insularity, pride and
persistence that allowed us never to forget, never to let down our guard, and
to always be proud of our stubborn vitality in the face of “those who sought to
destroy us.” When, in our modern liturgical idiom, we talk of the
State of Israel as “the First Flowering of our Redemption,” we are reflecting
the reality of our survival, the meaning of the achievement of political
self-determination in the context of Jewish history. It is good to
have survived.
But we must also see clearly the shadow that this history casts on us
today. We have striven to be the masters of our fate – but, having achieved
this, we must also realize that we are responsible for our actions and for the
consequences of these actions. Being free, we have free
choice. The tragedy of Jewish Diaspora history, in our own cultural
narrative as well as in reality, is rooted in our history of powerlessness and
passivity. Zionism came to correct this, and it has undeniably
succeeded, indeed far beyond the expectations of Jews and non-Jews
alike. But if we now become slaves to the consequences of empowerment,
then we are not free, and we are not truly powerful. The Nazi
Holocaust in particular casts its shadow over our modern history and the
history of the State of Israel. The Nazi’s campaign to eradicate
world Jewry has become part of our uniquely Jewish “Liturgy of Destruction,”
the way we Jews throughout the ages have made sense of our suffering by turning
to the broader context of Jewish history. From this matrix of
vulnerability, victimization and meaning-making comes the Zionist cry, “Never
again!” But the modern State in its policies, carried out
purportedly to preserve our people, and using the Holocaust as justification
for unjust actions, is betraying the meaning of Jewish history. You
cannot achieve your own deliverance, even from the most unspeakable evil, by
the oppression of another people. Indeed, in this current era of
power and self-determination for Jews in Israel, we face risks to our peoplehood that far exceed the
physical perils brought by millennia of persecution.
Israel and Palestine: Reality Stood On its Head
The stormy controversy over the Israel-Palestine question today – a controversy
that is splitting the Jewish community here in the United States as well as Israeli society, stands as evidence of this
risk. The history of conflict and bloodshed between the State of
Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine is the unavoidable and predictable result of the
colonialist nature of the Zionist enterprise. Although Zionism,
unlike the other European colonial projects, was not directed originally toward
the occupation and exploitation of a subject people – the Zionists sought only
to create a refuge for a themselves – it is no less a settler
colonial enterprise for that. What is uncanny and tragic is that in
the current discourse, the roles of the combatants are turned upside
down: The Jews are portrayed as the victims, and the Palestinians as
the aggressors. In truth, it is the Palestinians who are the
victims: dispossessed, powerless, and pained. In every way,
the Jews are victorious and all-powerful. The Jews of Israel are, to
be sure, pricked by acts of popular resistance on the part of
Palestinians. But in the perspective of the current power balance,
these are pinpricks, no more. At the same time, this resistance,
fueled by the desperation and humiliation of a displaced and occupied people,
has been amplified and exploited by political forces within and outside of Palestine. As terrifying as acts of resistance such as
suicide bombings and cross-border shellings are, Israel’s current hegemony, power, and certainly her security are
not threatened by these acts. Suicide bombings are horrible and
terrorizing. But it is too easy, too convenient to tar an entire
people with this brush, which is precisely what has happened. The
image of the Palestinians as a violent people, as “terrorists” bent on the
destruction of Israel, is not a true picture. The truth is that by
and large the Palestinians are a peaceful, patient people – and at this pass an
angry, humiliated and pained people. Their sin over the last 60 plus years has
been their relative lack of organization – set up effectively by the British
during their 30-year rule -- in the face of the highly organized and effective
Zionist colonial project. They are paying for this now as they face
the ongoing dismantling of their economy and their infrastructure, and the
continuing program to disable their leadership and ability to
self-govern. Israel has taken over where Britain left off – and with far greater efficiency and
thoroughness.
The Jewish Discussion
Although it is painful and deeply troubling, I see the
ferocity and depth of the current split within the Jewish community in the
Diaspora as an opportunity for dialogue. This is an issue of crisis
proportions for Jews, and we need to take it seriously. We must
encourage this conversation -- we stifle it at our great, great
peril. It is our responsibility as Jews to examine our relationship
to Israel, rather than to passively accept the story fed to us by
the Jewish establishment: the synagogues, Jewish Federations,
lobbying organizations and the rest of the apparatus devoted to maintaining the
mighty stream of financial and policy support for Israel from the US government and from private sources. We must
examine our convictions and feelings about the meaning of the State to us
personally, especially in relation to anti-Semitism. For example, do
I, as a Jew living in America, believe that the State of Israel is important to me as a
haven if I should feel unsafe or disadvantaged in my home
country? Do I personally feel that the existence of a Jewish State
is an essential or part of my Jewishness, or of the religious values and
beliefs that I hold as a Jew? Do I believe that the world owes a
state to the Jews because of the centuries of violence against and persecution
of the Jews, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust? These are all
important questions – they need to be asked, confronted, and measured against
the realities of contemporary life. Furthermore, as Diaspora Jews we
need to question where we get our information about the history of the State of
Israel and about the current political situation. What news services
do we rely on, what websites do we visit? What do we know about the
discussion going on inside Israel today, exemplified by the active dialogue to
be found in the pages of Haaretz, the organizations voicing opposition to
Israeli government policy, and the accelerated pace of revisionist Zionist
history being produced by Jewish Israeli historians?
We must become willing to overcome our profound denial about the current
reality and the injustices wrought by Zionism. Walter Brueggemann,
the Protestant theologian, in his work on the prophetic imagination, writes
about the prophetic call to grieve and to mourn, that only in this way can we
hope to move on to a new and better reality. Only when we are able
to cry, in Jeremiah’s phrase, for our own brokenness, and to confront the
implications of the suffering we have caused, can we be
the beneficiaries of God’s bounty. In other words, we must break
through the denial about what we have done. The power structure, of
course, is committed to the very opposite. The State turns the story
on its head in order to paper over the truth: “This is done in the
name of national security.” “These others are the terrorists,
they are the obstacles to peace.”
One particularly “slippery” form of denial, of this failure to grieve, is how
some Jews take issue with some of the actions of the Israeli government while
still avoiding confronting the fundamental issues of justice. This
can take several forms. The first is the “pragmatic” approach, which
can also be called the appeal to “enlightened self-interest.” “The
Occupation,” so this position goes, “was a mistake. It’s bad for Israel. Denying self-determination for Palestinians
and subjecting them to the humiliation of a military administration breeds
hatred and desperation, which is then visited upon Israelis in the form of
violence.” Some American Jewish organizations, hoping to avoid being
marginalized by the mainstream community, or labeled “Pro-Palestinian” adopt
this position, ignoring the issue of justice.. “Israel,” they say, “should smarten up and change its policies if
it wants to live in peace and limit the economic drain of unending
conflict.” In informal conversations with some Jewish Americans who
articulate this position, I have heard confessions that their position is
really much more extreme with respect to their feelings about Israeli policy,
but that they feel it important to hew to this line for strategic purposes, in
order to maintain credibility with the Jewish establishment as well as with
government legislators.
A second kind of denial, for me more serious and more disturbing, is to be
found in the ranks of what has come to be called the
Jewish Progressive movement. In his critique of this element of
American Judaism, Jewish Liberation theologian Marc Ellis notes that whereas
this element of Jewry critiques aspects of Jewish ascendancy by recognizing the
validity of Palestinian aspirations, it limits the scope of the critique by
accepting the need for this same Jewish ascendancy as a solution to Jewish
history. This viewpoint acknowledges the issue of justice, but attempts
to do this within the context of Jewish mainstream assumptions of entitlement
with respect to the rights of the Jews to historic Palestine. “If we can just clean up this messy business
of the Occupation,” say these people, “things will come out alright, and we
will be able to enjoy the land with a clean conscience.” This
viewpoint limits the discourse to actions post-1967: it denies the
history of Palestinian displacement prior to that. Indeed,
Progressive Jewish organizations avoid discussion of the Nakba, an Arabic word
meaning “catastrophe” used to describe the ethnic cleansing of three quarters
of a million Palestinians from historic Palestine by Israeli forces between1948 and 1949. Indeed,
progressive Jews have been known to become quite irritated with fellow Jews who
raise it. Finally, it avoids the fundamental question, which is how
a Jewish State, founded as a haven and a homeland for Jews, can be a true
democracy, providing justice and fair treatment for its non-Jewish citizenry. It
avoids the related and equally fundamental question of demography – the issue
that, above all others, drives Israeli foreign policy and fuels the current
political and military conflict. On the whole, Jews outside of Israel across a wide spectrum from “establishment” to
“progressive want to avoid these questions – indeed, they are off
limits.
This is denial – it is a fundamental failure to accept the consequences of
Jewish actions in pre- and post- 1948 Palestine-Israel, and thus a failure to
grieve over the particularly Jewish tragedy from which we as Jews suffer
today. Returning to the pre-1967 borders
(as if that will ever happen) will not make everything better. It
will not make Israel a just society with respect to its Palestinian
citizens. It will not erase what was done to the Palestinians who
were driven out of their cities, towns and villages in 1948. It does
not place the issue of justice as primary. Rather, it places the
interests of Israel as primary, and promotes an entitled, supremacist, paternalistic
stance with respect to non-Jewish inhabitants of historic Palestine, on whichever side of the final status border they may
reside when a political settlement is finally achieved. It pre-empts
our horror over the crimes we are committing and the suffering we have
caused. It muffles our own cries of pain over our sins and our
cruelties. It squelches the agony of confronting the contradictions
and the excruciating dilemmas. It blocks the
discussion. It closes our hearts.
Conclusion: Christians, Jews, Anti-Semitism, and Our Accountability
The issue of anti-Semitism is complex and deeply embedded in two thousand years
of Western history. Among liberal Christian theologians and
religious leaders, Supercessionism – the concept that Christianity, embodied in
the Gospels, came to replace Judaism as God’s plan for humankind – has become
the Great Evil. The argument, well supported by history, is that
this idea, developed in the first centuries after Christ and central to
Christian belief and doctrine, laid the groundwork for
anti-Semitism. But in their zeal to correct the injustices of the
past, and to in effect atone for anti-Semitism, Christian leaders and thinkers
are in danger of losing sight of an important aspect of early Christian
thought. Christianity, in its reframing of the relationship of God
to humanity, produced a revolution -- in effect, it moved the concept of “Israel” from the tribal to the communal. In the
Christian reframing, God’s commitment to humanity through his election of the
seed of Abraham, assigned a special role in history, was transformed into God’s
love for humankind and the invitation to all to become part of a universal
spiritual community. This was a great contribution, a great step
forward, and it has special relevance today, as all religions struggle to move
from “Constantinian,” power-based religions to communities based on a
commitment to diversity, human rights and Justice. The choice
between religion based on and consorting with political power and oppression,
and religion grounded in a concept of community is one that must be faced by
all the faiths. Jews and Christians must talk about this, indeed
they must come together with their Muslim friends and colleagues to together
confront what may be the central challenge of our times. We stifle
this discussion at our peril.
To our Christian sisters and brothers I say – do not, out of a sense of guilt
for anti-Semitism, give the Jewish people a free pass. Do not
confuse anti-Semitism with critique of Israel, and in so doing fail to hold
Jews accountable for our choices and our actions, as members of the human
community, as individuals, and as a nation state -- especially as a nation
state. To make this mistake, to allow yourselves
to be – I will use the word – bullied by the threat of the charge of
anti-Semitism, is to commit a pernicious fallacy. As Jews we sought
political self-determination, and we got it. Now we must behave in
accordance with principles of justice and in accordance with international law
as an expression of universally agreed-upon principles of
justice. As Jews, we are confronted daily with this choice as we
witness the illegal and oppressive actions of the Jewish State toward the
Palestinian people it is so rapidly displacing. Empowerment –
political empowerment – presents a mighty challenge to values. The
Prophets knew this well, continually speaking this truth to the power
structures of their day. To the crushed and exiled Jewish people of
his time, Second Isaiah declared that redemption and comfort was coming, but
only when the people acknowledged the divine meaning of their
suffering. To my coreligionists in Israel and America, I say that we will ultimately survive as a people only to
the extent that we can understand how our own suffering makes us part of humankind, and responsible for suffering wherever and
whenever it happens. It was Roberta Feuerlicht, the Jewish ethicist
who famously wrote, “Judaism survived centuries of persecution without a state; it must now learn how to survive despite a
state.”
Mark Braverman lives in Bethesda, MD. He is a member of Jewish Voices for Peace and
serves on the Boards of Partners for Peace and the Washington Interfaith
Alliance for Middle East Peace. Contact: m_braverman@yahoo.com
© 2007 mbraverman@bravermangroup.com