Thought experiment: Consider 2 Arabs in 1948. One lived inside the original border of Israel, and remained inside that border. The other lived "somewhere else" in the region, perhaps Syria or Lebanon, perhaps Jordan, perhaps the West Bank (which was part of Jordan until 1967) or Gaza.
Question: Which one is better off today? I'm not saying Israel is perfect, I'm just asking, which country is more likely to respect your rights?
I'm not a Zionist by any means. But, if I wanna defend human rights in the region -- and I want to live in the real world -- then I have no choice but to defend Israel. There's no other option. To act as if a hypothetical Palestinian Arab state would be a model of human rights is to ignore reality.
How timely is this 20-year-old op-ed from a former Speaker of the Knesset, former Interim President of Israel, and former Zionist, Avraham Burg, titled "THE END OF ZIONISM" Ive posted a few paragraphs from it, below. I suggest reading it in its entirety.
"It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. You can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the occupation. Traveling on the fast highway that skirts barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.
This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow their shame and anger for ever, it won't work. A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing.
[... ]
Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below - from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption.
If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative." [... ]
I think Maya Rackoff wants to have it both ways: show her humanitarianism by stating she's "terrified and disgusted by news that emerges from Gaza every day." (That phrasing seems to sidestep the violent reality, unlike, say, "Im terrified and disgusted by the murderous bombs that fall on Gazans every day") And she's against settlements and IDF excesses. But at the same time, she opposes a ceasefire, which, in reality, is a green light for the mass murder of 1000s of civilians, 2 mos to present, along with a severe deprivation of life's essentials, including the destruction of their homes, their hospitals, schools, mosques & churches - their homeland. She prioritizes an ideal of Zionism, a land for Jews, and the idea that it might cease to exist as a Zionist state, over preventing the current actuality of the violent extinction of Gazans, natives of that land, on their already impoverished, controlled and restricted strip of land.
I'm sorry, but concerns about some incidents of stirred up antisemitism on campus or the anti Zionist movement seem to rightly recede from the spotlit consciousness of an ongoing genocide. I strongly support the CeasefireNow masses, despite a few flawed participants. I say thank god for these protesters, woke or not, anti Zionist or not, because I shudder to think of hearing "the news that emerges from Gaza every day" against a backdrop of our complicit silence.
I enjoyed reading Maya's essay because I could feel the emotion in her words, but I can't help but make a couple of observations. People die in wars and Israel did not start this war. Never again must literally mean "never again" or the Jew are doomed. There should be no confusion about this.
I come from a Communist country and emigrated when I was young. The life-blood of Marxism is resentment toward the accomplished. In other words, if you can't bring everybody up, then bring everybody down, and down is where you get the great proletariat of sameness.
When I first started to hear about equity, hate crimes, and the rest of that salad, I sensed that at some point soon, there would be huge waves of anti-Semitism.
Jews are arguably among the very most, if not the most, maligned group in history. And today, in the United States, the greatest social capital is that of victim-status...which allows for the explaining away of personal and group failure.
Yet Jews, this maligned group, like so many Asians, totally defy this equation. I think this goes a very long way in explaining the intensity of Jew-hatred you see today, especially on campus, but not just there.
In other words, Jews are victims nonpareil who are also success stories nonpareil. The ultimate blasphemy in the new dispensation.
Mohammed rolled together in one remarkable man the roles of prophet and saint and warrior and king and pope. And Islam in a century plus had an empire sprawling from Spain to Baghdad to Eastern Europe to North Africa. Human nature and history are filled with darkness and light and few easy answers.
I was criticized for a comment I had made speaking on Islamic conquest and their brutality and speed. I was told, among other things, that they were not "settler colonialists" and never intended to be.
A well-intentioned and heartfelt account; nevertheless it manifests the universalist currents of liberal Judaism which is largely an American phenomenon within Judaism writ large. The result is the characteristic moral confusion and naïveté that prevail among 90% of American Jews. Notwithstanding those criticisms, I applaud Maya for having the courage to speak out, and for doing so candidly and honestly.
This is a well written essay, and I wish you peace, Maya. As I read this and learn of the environment on yours and other campuses, I struggle to understand how the administration of these schools just goes on about their business and does nothing to educate and bring people together. It’s as if they agree with the protesters, huh?!
Interesting and well-written; I'm anti-Zionist, but I understand and appreciate the honest and careful perspectives here. At least by the commonality of values (taken as a whole) this is someone I'd be happy to have as a friend rather than someone whose views I find loathsome (but then, many of my friends have been Zionist to one degree or another; it's no surprise).
so i take it you are anti-every former SSR as they now exist as independent nations?
are you anti-the independence of timor leste and south sudan? are you anti-the Dayton accord which brought an end to the balkan wars producing ethnic states including ethnic states within states?
are you anti-palestinian nationalism which has declared itself an iteration of arab and islamic nationalism?
I think you've gotten details wrong in characterising some of the above as ethnonationalist, but whenever a nation declares that it's the homeland for a certain ethnicity and takes strong steps to advantage that ethnicity over other citizens, it's a racist mistake that sets the stage for tragedy.
Many of the places you mention are shitholes. Not necessarily the former SSRs, but many of the rest. Whether they classify as ethnonationalist properly or not, they're terrible places to live and have a long civilising road ahead of them. Israel may be backsliding with terrible high-level leaders (Bibi, Smotrich, and earlier Ze'evi) and racist laws (2018 nationality law) and policies (general deference to the settler movements) but it could be a lot worse. It could be a lot better too.
If Israel were to scrap that law, make sure it never again accepts into the Knesset (much less the cabinet) anyone pushing for ethnic cleansing, reign in the settlers, and end the Law of Return, it'd go a long ways towards making a just society. The Palestinian people likewise have a long way to go, ideally fully towards integrating into Israeli society once they see a society that will treat them as equally welcome.
Even the places that are shitholes have a right to escape genocide. Additionally, plenty of non-ethnic countries are crap, so I don’t know why you bring up that point of contention.
Israel elects whom they choose. Your desires are irrelevant. Your claim that an ethnic country necessarily takes steps to advantage one group over another is not a necessary trait of such states. Additionally you completely ignored the formation of ethnic states as what specifically ended genocides, because it clearly goes against your worldview.
As for Israel, how about you delve on ways in which Palestinians could do better, given that the very best political leadership they have ever put forwarded can only be categorized as slightly better, if at all, than the very worst Israel has.
"They elect whom they choose" doesn't excuse electing people advocating ethnic cleansing. It's unacceptable; they need to stop making that choice, and other nations need to show a willingness to swiftly cut aid and ties to Israel whenever an ethnic cleanser ends up in the cabinet. Smotrich should be someone they're both unwilling to and afraid of having in cabinet. Ze'evi should've been enough of a lesson.
Ethnonationalism is a scourge across the world - nations must not try to be "about" a particular ethnicity.
I've done so at length, elsewhere. Indiscriminate violence goes beyond the justifiability - if they were to focus on settlements with abuse, it'd at least be focused. Anti-semitism in Palestinian schoolbooks needs to end. Having a coherent set of demands that are not excessive and that don't imagine their own ethnic cleansing of jewish people in Israel is important.
Maya, as Brown grad and a Jew, I am proud of your vigorous and yet nuanced defense of Jews, Zionism and Israel. Thank you for hitting every crucial point, including that Hamas had no reason not to expect the military response from the IDF and clearly welcomes making their people martyrs to their jihadist cause. But even more, I am grateful to Professor Loury for giving you this platform.
Shedding light on experiences like these is not only helpful, but fundamental. Without it, the conversation seems mired in the abstract.
That's my convoluted way of thanking Glenn for posting this.
Maya strikes me as fair-minded, well-grounded and thoughtful. Kudos, and stay safe if you're reading this.
I continue to struggle with this issue. I don't know what to think to be honest. It all seems so hopeless. I want to believe that something can be worked out one day, but religion...
Ergo, a lot of people are going to end up dead, maimed, displaced, and everything in between. Apparently, that's just the way it is. Crazy stuff.
As far as I can tell, the 21st Century has seen Israel lose substantial ground in public relations, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's not only among the youth, but the left in general, as well as a growing anti-neoconservative faction on the right.
How Israel and its allies manage this relatively new set of circumstances is an open question.
It is something the Jews have experienced for thousands of years, and even tho they have always been a very small percentage of the worlds population, they have survived and in most instances thrived. Thomas Sowell was once asked what Jews could do to change the world's opinion of them. His one word answer was "fail". Envy and resentment, especially if harnessed by malevolent forces, led to the persecution of the Jews throughout history. Keep fighting the good fight Maya.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Maya. I'll be sharing your editorial with my higher education colleagues. As a Christian (with a Jewish dad), I have been praying. I support my Jewish students and friends and Israel's right to exist.
I am an American and Muslim (convert). When I hear “River to Sea”, I think of the maps on the walls of neighborhood Palestinian merchants (SF - Upper Tenderloin) that are colored green from river to sea. That would be genocide of the Israeli state. One standard for Israel and a much lower standard for the rest of the world is BS. I believe the mis-used term “Apartheid” is intended to hystericize Black Americans.
If gov resources are being used to promote hatred against Israel and Jews at public school (K-12) and public university, and at the work site (city-Gov, state-Gov, Fed) - that would not be legal.
Thought experiment: Consider 2 Arabs in 1948. One lived inside the original border of Israel, and remained inside that border. The other lived "somewhere else" in the region, perhaps Syria or Lebanon, perhaps Jordan, perhaps the West Bank (which was part of Jordan until 1967) or Gaza.
Question: Which one is better off today? I'm not saying Israel is perfect, I'm just asking, which country is more likely to respect your rights?
I'm not a Zionist by any means. But, if I wanna defend human rights in the region -- and I want to live in the real world -- then I have no choice but to defend Israel. There's no other option. To act as if a hypothetical Palestinian Arab state would be a model of human rights is to ignore reality.
How timely is this 20-year-old op-ed from a former Speaker of the Knesset, former Interim President of Israel, and former Zionist, Avraham Burg, titled "THE END OF ZIONISM" Ive posted a few paragraphs from it, below. I suggest reading it in its entirety.
The End of Zionism
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/15/comment
"It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. You can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the occupation. Traveling on the fast highway that skirts barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.
This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow their shame and anger for ever, it won't work. A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing.
[... ]
Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below - from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption.
If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative." [... ]
I think Maya Rackoff wants to have it both ways: show her humanitarianism by stating she's "terrified and disgusted by news that emerges from Gaza every day." (That phrasing seems to sidestep the violent reality, unlike, say, "Im terrified and disgusted by the murderous bombs that fall on Gazans every day") And she's against settlements and IDF excesses. But at the same time, she opposes a ceasefire, which, in reality, is a green light for the mass murder of 1000s of civilians, 2 mos to present, along with a severe deprivation of life's essentials, including the destruction of their homes, their hospitals, schools, mosques & churches - their homeland. She prioritizes an ideal of Zionism, a land for Jews, and the idea that it might cease to exist as a Zionist state, over preventing the current actuality of the violent extinction of Gazans, natives of that land, on their already impoverished, controlled and restricted strip of land.
I'm sorry, but concerns about some incidents of stirred up antisemitism on campus or the anti Zionist movement seem to rightly recede from the spotlit consciousness of an ongoing genocide. I strongly support the CeasefireNow masses, despite a few flawed participants. I say thank god for these protesters, woke or not, anti Zionist or not, because I shudder to think of hearing "the news that emerges from Gaza every day" against a backdrop of our complicit silence.
I do think she’s trying to have it both ways: she should be pro Zionist and Israel and stop there.
Pro Israel and Pro Zionist, huh? I'd advise her to work on the other side of the 2.
You're still much safer on that campus than a white guy in a black area. Relax.
I enjoyed reading Maya's essay because I could feel the emotion in her words, but I can't help but make a couple of observations. People die in wars and Israel did not start this war. Never again must literally mean "never again" or the Jew are doomed. There should be no confusion about this.
I come from a Communist country and emigrated when I was young. The life-blood of Marxism is resentment toward the accomplished. In other words, if you can't bring everybody up, then bring everybody down, and down is where you get the great proletariat of sameness.
When I first started to hear about equity, hate crimes, and the rest of that salad, I sensed that at some point soon, there would be huge waves of anti-Semitism.
Jews are arguably among the very most, if not the most, maligned group in history. And today, in the United States, the greatest social capital is that of victim-status...which allows for the explaining away of personal and group failure.
Yet Jews, this maligned group, like so many Asians, totally defy this equation. I think this goes a very long way in explaining the intensity of Jew-hatred you see today, especially on campus, but not just there.
In other words, Jews are victims nonpareil who are also success stories nonpareil. The ultimate blasphemy in the new dispensation.
Mohammed rolled together in one remarkable man the roles of prophet and saint and warrior and king and pope. And Islam in a century plus had an empire sprawling from Spain to Baghdad to Eastern Europe to North Africa. Human nature and history are filled with darkness and light and few easy answers.
I was criticized for a comment I had made speaking on Islamic conquest and their brutality and speed. I was told, among other things, that they were not "settler colonialists" and never intended to be.
I might ask then what the intent was behind their many conquests.
You are a brave women - it’s like being a conservative on these campuses- stay safe!
A well-intentioned and heartfelt account; nevertheless it manifests the universalist currents of liberal Judaism which is largely an American phenomenon within Judaism writ large. The result is the characteristic moral confusion and naïveté that prevail among 90% of American Jews. Notwithstanding those criticisms, I applaud Maya for having the courage to speak out, and for doing so candidly and honestly.
This is a well written essay, and I wish you peace, Maya. As I read this and learn of the environment on yours and other campuses, I struggle to understand how the administration of these schools just goes on about their business and does nothing to educate and bring people together. It’s as if they agree with the protesters, huh?!
Interesting and well-written; I'm anti-Zionist, but I understand and appreciate the honest and careful perspectives here. At least by the commonality of values (taken as a whole) this is someone I'd be happy to have as a friend rather than someone whose views I find loathsome (but then, many of my friends have been Zionist to one degree or another; it's no surprise).
Why are you "anti-Zionist"??
Opposition to all ethnonationalism; I think civic nationalism is the only viable and moral way to build nations.
so i take it you are anti-every former SSR as they now exist as independent nations?
are you anti-the independence of timor leste and south sudan? are you anti-the Dayton accord which brought an end to the balkan wars producing ethnic states including ethnic states within states?
are you anti-palestinian nationalism which has declared itself an iteration of arab and islamic nationalism?
I think you've gotten details wrong in characterising some of the above as ethnonationalist, but whenever a nation declares that it's the homeland for a certain ethnicity and takes strong steps to advantage that ethnicity over other citizens, it's a racist mistake that sets the stage for tragedy.
Many of the places you mention are shitholes. Not necessarily the former SSRs, but many of the rest. Whether they classify as ethnonationalist properly or not, they're terrible places to live and have a long civilising road ahead of them. Israel may be backsliding with terrible high-level leaders (Bibi, Smotrich, and earlier Ze'evi) and racist laws (2018 nationality law) and policies (general deference to the settler movements) but it could be a lot worse. It could be a lot better too.
If Israel were to scrap that law, make sure it never again accepts into the Knesset (much less the cabinet) anyone pushing for ethnic cleansing, reign in the settlers, and end the Law of Return, it'd go a long ways towards making a just society. The Palestinian people likewise have a long way to go, ideally fully towards integrating into Israeli society once they see a society that will treat them as equally welcome.
Even the places that are shitholes have a right to escape genocide. Additionally, plenty of non-ethnic countries are crap, so I don’t know why you bring up that point of contention.
Israel elects whom they choose. Your desires are irrelevant. Your claim that an ethnic country necessarily takes steps to advantage one group over another is not a necessary trait of such states. Additionally you completely ignored the formation of ethnic states as what specifically ended genocides, because it clearly goes against your worldview.
As for Israel, how about you delve on ways in which Palestinians could do better, given that the very best political leadership they have ever put forwarded can only be categorized as slightly better, if at all, than the very worst Israel has.
"They elect whom they choose" doesn't excuse electing people advocating ethnic cleansing. It's unacceptable; they need to stop making that choice, and other nations need to show a willingness to swiftly cut aid and ties to Israel whenever an ethnic cleanser ends up in the cabinet. Smotrich should be someone they're both unwilling to and afraid of having in cabinet. Ze'evi should've been enough of a lesson.
Ethnonationalism is a scourge across the world - nations must not try to be "about" a particular ethnicity.
I've done so at length, elsewhere. Indiscriminate violence goes beyond the justifiability - if they were to focus on settlements with abuse, it'd at least be focused. Anti-semitism in Palestinian schoolbooks needs to end. Having a coherent set of demands that are not excessive and that don't imagine their own ethnic cleansing of jewish people in Israel is important.
This is a very honest and direct communication. Well done. Interning for Professor Loury makes good sense for you.
Maya, as Brown grad and a Jew, I am proud of your vigorous and yet nuanced defense of Jews, Zionism and Israel. Thank you for hitting every crucial point, including that Hamas had no reason not to expect the military response from the IDF and clearly welcomes making their people martyrs to their jihadist cause. But even more, I am grateful to Professor Loury for giving you this platform.
Shedding light on experiences like these is not only helpful, but fundamental. Without it, the conversation seems mired in the abstract.
That's my convoluted way of thanking Glenn for posting this.
Maya strikes me as fair-minded, well-grounded and thoughtful. Kudos, and stay safe if you're reading this.
I continue to struggle with this issue. I don't know what to think to be honest. It all seems so hopeless. I want to believe that something can be worked out one day, but religion...
Ergo, a lot of people are going to end up dead, maimed, displaced, and everything in between. Apparently, that's just the way it is. Crazy stuff.
As far as I can tell, the 21st Century has seen Israel lose substantial ground in public relations, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's not only among the youth, but the left in general, as well as a growing anti-neoconservative faction on the right.
How Israel and its allies manage this relatively new set of circumstances is an open question.
It is something the Jews have experienced for thousands of years, and even tho they have always been a very small percentage of the worlds population, they have survived and in most instances thrived. Thomas Sowell was once asked what Jews could do to change the world's opinion of them. His one word answer was "fail". Envy and resentment, especially if harnessed by malevolent forces, led to the persecution of the Jews throughout history. Keep fighting the good fight Maya.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Maya. I'll be sharing your editorial with my higher education colleagues. As a Christian (with a Jewish dad), I have been praying. I support my Jewish students and friends and Israel's right to exist.
I am an American and Muslim (convert). When I hear “River to Sea”, I think of the maps on the walls of neighborhood Palestinian merchants (SF - Upper Tenderloin) that are colored green from river to sea. That would be genocide of the Israeli state. One standard for Israel and a much lower standard for the rest of the world is BS. I believe the mis-used term “Apartheid” is intended to hystericize Black Americans.
If gov resources are being used to promote hatred against Israel and Jews at public school (K-12) and public university, and at the work site (city-Gov, state-Gov, Fed) - that would not be legal.
Thank you Thank you.