Len, I thought no one could ever beat my pet "Judeofascism"... until some Israeli scholar comes up with "Judeonazism" --Goddamit! As always, it takes a thief to catch a thief:
Towards the Racialization of Zionism
But for the time being many friends of Israel are anxious that the repressive forces in the Jewish state are getting stronger - and a distinctly Israeli form of racism may be evolving. This is a minority. But within that racially anti-Arab minority there may be a smaller and more ominous sub-group.
There is a school of thought in Israel which is already becoming fascist. This issue is debated more frankly in Israel itself than in the United States. Lovers of democracy in Israel are alarmed by the fascist trend. There is even an Israeli word for this kind of Semitic fascism. Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz of the Hebrew University has called it: Judeo-Nazism. As editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, Leibovitz has grappled with many trends in the Jewish experience. But he has now raised the issue of whether the concept of Judeo-Nazism is any longer a contradiction in terms.
Israelis are warning each other that the unthinkable is not necessarily impossible. Specific sociological conditions in inter-war Germany fostered right wing extremism among the Germans. The history of German extremism started with a people who believed they had been humiliated and humbled.
The Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I created among the Germans a martyrdom complex which later favoured the rise of extreme nationalism. The martyrdom complex -- strong among the Israelis today and powerful among the Germans in the inter-war years -- can degenerate into paranoia. We now know that lovers of democracy in the German population underestimated the danger. The whole world paid a heavy price for German paranoia.
Jews -- like the Germans -- have been impressive contributors to world civilization. But both people are human, and therefore psychologically vulnerable. The danger of extremism is real.
The stages toward extremism through which the German psyche passed were as follows:
1. Martyrdom Complex
2. Paranoia
3. Extreme Nationalism
4. Racial Exclusivity
5. Militarization
6. Territorial Expansionism
It is very unlikely that Israelis will pass through similar stages. There are in any case major constraints to Zionist extremism. The question nevertheless remains whether the danger of fascism in Israel is real enough to alarm Israeli patriots themselves.
Israel was genuinely born out of the ashes and anguish of the Holocaust. It was a more genuine martyrdom than was the Nazi sense of humiliation in the inter-war years.
But when does the martyrdom complex evolve into paranoia? In two stages in the case of the Jews:
a) Monopolizing the Holocaust as an experience of the Past
b) Pre-empting imaginary Holocausts of the future
A 1980's American immigrant into Israel from a religious family in New York prayed for a new persecution of Jews in the Diaspora so that they are forced to go to the fortress Israel:
"The hatred the Gentiles feel towards the Jews is eternal. There never was peace between us and them except when they totally beat us or when we shall totally beat them. Maybe if they will give someone like Sharon the chance to kill... until the Arabs will understand that we did them a favour letting them remain alive.... We are powerful now and power should talk now. The Gentiles only understand the language of power."
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared in April 1988:
"We say to them, from this hilltop and from the perspective of thousands of years of history, that in our eyes they are like grasshoppers."
Menachin Begin's earlier denunciation of Palestinians as "two-legged animals" has formed part of the same drift towards racist perceptions and perspectives in powerful circles in Israel.
Is Zionist nationalism stifling Israeli liberalism? Opinion polls of Israeli attitudes to the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories is one measure. The death of over 500 Palestinians since the Intifada began has not alarmed enough Israelis. Indeed, the majority of Israelis seem to want even stiffer measures against the Palestinians.
When is soft Israeli arrogance towards the Arabs paternalistic? As an Israeli originally from Aden put it:
"We know that the Arab is an obedient good creature as long as he is not incited and no one puts ideas into his head.... He just has to be told exactly what his right place is.... They must understand who the master is. That's all."
When united to fanaticism and nationalism, arrogance can take the form of militant racism. Take the case of the young rabbi who denounced the "filth" of mixed marriages and the "hybrid children" such marriages produce -- "a thorn in the flesh of the Jewish society in Israel."
This rabbi recommended school segregation and exclusion of Arabs from the universities. Echoes of apartheid are unmistakable.
As for the trend towards militarization, Israel has indeed become the most efficient war machine since Nazi Germany. In war after war the Jewish state has demonstrated staggering proficiency both in the air and on land. The six-day war in June 1967 was its most dazzling military success. Did this military success increase territorial appetite?
A state created in the teeth of the opposition of indigenous people became a state surrounded by hostile neighbours. It was only a matter of time before the moral cost had to be paid. A Director-General of Israel Broadcasting Authority (radio and television) during years of apartheid was a "long time admirer of South Africa and a frequent visitor there." He even wrote an "emotional article" expressing his preference for South Africa over Black Africa, complete "with citations of research proving genetic inferiority of blacks" -- a view which "seems to reflect the feeling of many in the Israeli elite."
The journal of Mapam (left wing of Labour Alignment) published an explanation of the superiority of Israeli pilots. Blacks and Arabs were inferior in "complex, cognitive intelligence." That was why "American Blacks succeed only in short distance running."
Israeli neo-Nazism reversed the scale of genetic values favoured by German Nazis. Both forms of extremism exaggerated the impact of the Jewish factor. The Nazis thought the Jewish impact was negative. The Israeli extremists erred the other way.
Why has the United States outdistanced Europe in modern culture? The proportion of Jews in the American population has enhanced American creativity, according to this Israeli school of thought.
By implication German inventiveness before the Holocaust was due to the Jewish creative infusion into the German population. An Israeli labour party journal refers to "genetic experiments" at Tel Aviv University -- which have shown that "genetic differences among Jewish communities [Poland and Yemen are cited] are smaller than those between Gentiles and Jews."
"In earlier years the Rabbinate had cited biblical authority to justify expulsion of the Arabs ("The foreign element") from the land, or simply their destruction, and religious law was invoked to justify killing of civilians in war or raid."
American Rabbi Isaac Bernstein argued that religious law gives power and legitimacy to Israel to "dispossess the Arabs of the conquered territories." Another Rabbi, Rabbi Lubovitcher of New York, deplored that Israel did not conquer Damascus during the 1973 October War.
A doctrine emerged called "secure and defensible borders." After almost every war Israel attempted to get more territory. Whose secure and defensible borders? Because of Israel's military supremacy, only Israel had such secure borders. The Arabs were easily penetrable by Israeli air and rocket power.
The transition from chosen people to chosen race gathered momentum. Rabbi Elazar Valdman of Gush Emunim wrote in the journal Nekudah of the West Bank settlers:
We will certainly establish order in the Middle East and in the world. And if we do not take this responsibility upon ourselves, we are sinners, not just towards ourselves but towards the entire world. For who can establish order in the world? All of those Western leaders of weak character?
The question which inevitably has now arisen is whether Israel's taste for imperial expansion can long be sustained without hurting Israeli democracy. Can the sadism against Palestinians be long enjoyed without creating Israeli masochism? Is Zionism becoming a cancer not just on the body politic of Arab stability but also on the body politic of Jewish sense of justice?
Can a State be Jewish and Democratic?
In the course of this twenty-first century Israel will have to choose between remaining a Jewish state and remaining a democracy. Such a dilemma already exists but it will get worse.
The proportion of Arabs in Israel is higher than the proportion of Blacks in the United States. Yet while Blacks in the United States have reached high echelons in the executive branch, Arabs in Israel are marginalized in government.
Arab Israelis have done well in the legislative branch, but have effectively been kept out of major executive and judicial positions. There is no Arab equivalent of Thurgood Marshall or Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Arab population in Israel - now eighteen percent - is on its way towards becoming a quarter of the population. There will indeed come a time when Israel has to choose between being a Jewish state and being a democratic state.
More recently there is increasing support in the state of Israel for a policy which is euphemistically called "transfer". It is basically a policy of ethnic cleansing. More and more Israelis are dreaming of a kind "final solution to the Palestinian problem"-- the transfer of all Palestinians of the West Bank [and presumably Gaza] to new refugee camps in the rest of the Arab world. What to do with those Palestinians who are already Israeli citizens poses difficult problems for these ultra-Zionists.
But American civil liberties and Israeli democracy are not the only victims of the cruel behavior of the State of Israel towards Palestinians. There is also the additional risk of reactivating international anti-Semitism. It is to this dimension that we should now turn.
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