BHA: Re: <fwd>Edward Said - American Zionism (3)

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Caroline--

>                But as critical realists desperately
> upset about what's happening in the Middle East, if we want to understand
> why most (but not all) Israelis and many (but by no means all) diaspora
Jews
> FEEL as if the Israelis are powerless where they are the oppressors, we
have
> to understand something about psychodynamics, about how oppression is
> internalised and how oppressed people may take on some of the
> characteristics of their oppressors.  The Jews were abandoned during the
> Third Reich.  The State of Israel came directly out of that abandonment.
In
> the historical psyche, that is just yesterday - you can't expect sudden
> feelings of trust in a benign international community.

Yes, particularly as almost every member of the international community has
repeatedly and vehemently attacked Israel's actions or denied its right to
exist, and some did so even before the state was founded.  Surely that has
something to do with the Israeli seige mentality (and does little to
encourage negotiations).  On top of that, not a day goes by in Israel,
especially in Jerusalem, without fear that at any moment and without any
warning a bomb could blow up in a market, a bus station, or anyplace else,
brought by someone who could be just another worker.  Without at all
condoning Israel's attacks on Palestinians, one can at least understand the
Israeli's political, psychological and emotional situation.

> Said rightly hates the trick of pretending that any criticism of Israeli
> government policies and actions is anti-Semitic.  I hate that too.  But I
> have come across anti-semitism on the left many times.  One example is
when
> Jews are expected to dissociate themselves from Israel in a way no other
> people, culturally or ethnically linked to a country, are expected to
> dissociate themselves from it IN ORDER TO BE CONSIDERED OKAY.

Quite true.  And Israel is expected to adhere to a higher moral standard
than anybody else.  (Do the Arab countries want Palestinians in their own
lands?  Not a chance.  And how would they'd act if Palestinians repeatedly
set off bombs in markets in Damascus or Amman?)

But I would like to note that Jews are not quite the only people who
leftists expect to act in the perverse manner you describe.  After all, it
is pretty much obligatory for American leftists to be anti-American, at
least according to some branches of the left.  Somehow I don't think that,
say, English leftists feel the same kind of imperative to be anti-English.
The U.S. may be the belly of the capitalist beast, but that doesn't mean
that everything it's ever done is drenched with evil.  (I have to say, the
old Communist Party of the USA had a rather interesting idea when they tried
to connect socialism to the radicalism that helped stir the American
struggle for independence.)

Your suggestion that the latest crisis in the Middle East needs to be viewed
from a critical realist perspective is I think a salutary one.  Your basic
point -- that there are scores of historical and political complexities
here, such that we should not resort to simplistic analyses and solutions --
is right on the mark.  That is not at all to say that the deck is stacked
equally on both sides, of course; but it *is* to say that if we hope to
understand what's going on there, we have to grasp both the macro- and the
micro-dynamics.

Thanks,  T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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