Here is a decently well-written "inside baseball" essay-review at The Nation, reviewing Susie Linfield's troubled book about historical figures in liberal and left wing Zionism over the past century. Those who know me know I stand with Noam Chomsky and the late I.F. Stone about the Zionist project, despite differences between the two (Chomsky was a fan of cultural Zionism, while Stone was a liberal-left Zionist). For me, I would say my support, and, later, criticism of Zionism during my life has been historically based, and based further upon a particularist and British style-empirical philosophy, rather than an a religious-based or ideological support. Over the years, I have said, when discussing the topic with sufficiently enlightened friends, if I was in my middle age in the period of the late 1930s through the late 1940s, I would be a liberal to left Zionist--meaning opposed to expansionist and racist policies, but still of the view that the creation of Israel was a vital historically based policy for world Jewry. However, if we were to go back further in time, and I was in Europe at the dawn of the 20th Century and up through the early 1930s, I may have been one of the following: First, I may have been a Trotsky-supporting Menshevik, or someone in the Bund movement, seeking redemption on European soil, and therefore opposed to Zionism. On the other hand, if I was less optimistic about the status of Jews in Europe, and less of the view that we could overcome the growing nationalism in Europe (which thrived on anti-Semitism), I would have left Europe, and joined the cultural Zionism movement in Israel with Ahad Ha'am (It is worth noting that both of Chomsky's parents were ardent members of this movement, and it was not simply, as the book reviewer said, Chomsky's father). Therefore, either way, I would have rejected political Zionism, just as the Reform Jewish denomination did during that time up through the mid to late 1930s.
As it is, I despair for the entire Zionist project, and continue to agree with the late Shimon Peres' remarkably astute book, The Imaginary Voyage, where he admits in parts of the book how disappointed Herzl would be in the way Israel developed, and the militarism and racism that has been meted out against Palestinians and Arab bedouins. Peres' book was very clear how Herzl foresaw, in his last years, not a "Jewish" state, but one far more resembling a single bi-national state, where non-Jewish Arabs had equal rights with Jews. Peres was much more interested in quoting more from Herzl's later work of inspirational fiction, The Old New Land, than from Herzl's original work, The Jewish State. One may easily overstate Peres' outlook expressed in his book, and I am fine if someone wishes to tell me I am doing that. However, Peres wrote his book at the end of the 1990s, at a time when he still had a fundamental optimism regarding prospects for a lasting peace with Palestinians, and could afford to admit unpleasant things about Zionism. The irony for me is how, recently, I went back to read a book of interviews with Edward Said, and found his optimism about the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the mid to late 1980s touchingly poignant.
As I think about my views about Israel over the years, I realize that my views about Israel may seem schizophrenic, as they are part of my overall contrarian nature. I am firm believer we are all wrong at one level or another, and at one time or the other. Specifically, over the years, I find I am most pro-Israel when I am confronted with hard-line anti-Zionists. I am most anti-Israel when confronted with hard-line Zionists. This is akin to my sardonic joke about my hopes and fears about America: "Once America goes socialist, I will become a Bolshevik. If America becomes Bolshevik, I will become a libertarian." I then go back to an old philosopher's saw which my first main boss in the law, the late Douglas W. Richardson, said to me--and I can only paraphrase at this point: By the time an idea has become fully accepted by the vast majority of people, and has been executed upon for some time, it becomes wrong. Doug's statement was dialectic, of course--which was ironic, because he saw himself as a Robert Taft Republican. However, his aphorism contains a deeper insight, which is this:
The abuses from an otherwise good idea often do not come to the forefront until the good idea congeals into dogma. My own philosophy is more akin to Daniel Bell's, which is that economic socialist ideas are generally good for some of the big things everyone uses, and what will be needed from time to time thereafter are public policy based tweaks, as people learn to get around things they shouldn't. And eventually, wholesale reforms may be necessary. In that meantime, debates should be more about public policy rather than ideology. It is why I support mixed economies more than anything "pure," whether capitalist, socialist, or the other isms that we have seen over the past 150 years.
But back to my sensibility about Zionism. I am probably closer to anti-Zionism than I have ever been in my entire life. Until recently, I was a liberal then left Zionist who continued to believe in the two-state solution as the only practical solution for two people who have been fighting for over a century. However, as the scales fell from my eyes about the lack of viability about a two-state solution, and, as I had to confront the fact the majority of Israeli Jews are more into apartheid and fascism--and militarism inherent in both strains--I have concluded I no longer have any basis for any continued support for Israel. It is not quite a BDS position, as there is still a small, but perceptible smell of anti-Semitism around its edges. However, my view is one where I say I now oppose U.S. military or economic aid to Israel. Also, I see more Israeli Jews identifying their Judaism with the land they wish to gain and control, while my identification with Judaism is through its universality and separation from the land. In other words, the political entity, Israel, does not define my relationship with Jewish theology or philosophy.
And to return where we began, which is Susie Linfield's book. Having read The Nation book review, I am sad to say the book sounds highly disappointing. Linfield's intent appears to have been to provide a history of liberal-left Zionism. However, the reviewer reveals her book to be a presentist polemic.* Linfield would apparently rather demonize Arendt, Deutscher, Chomsky, and Stone in the service of a faded belief in a two-state solution, when the majority of the Israeli voting public, and the Palestinians who suffer under Israeli occupation (West Bank) or blockades and bombings (Gaza), no longer believe that solution is feasible.
So where do I stand about Israel? Frankly, I stand nowhere. Instead, I sit with despair, and find myself more interested in hiding from the noise and rancor by finishing my reading of the novels of the late Amos Oz and now very elderly A.B. Yehoshua (who recently came out in favor of a single bi-national state,). My heart goes out to liberal and left Zionists still left (pun intended) in Israel, and I wish I could whisk them here to the United States--and help the rest of America elect Bernie Sanders for president. The lonely left Zionists in Israel speak much more to my sensibility than the majority of Israeli Jewish voters, and I know they are now fatally outnumbered. I find every rocket fired from Gaza into Israel, every bomb from Israel fired into Gaza, every permit denied to a Palestinian, every water well blocked and then stolen by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, is an arrow piercing my heart. And I have finally run out of space in my heart for any more arrows.
* The presentist argument is often made against my RFK-lives novel. That has been most ironic since I went out of my way to ensure RFK was not clairvoyant, and to take RFK's and others' views about the economy, politics, and culture from the time in which people were living as how they would have acted. As an example, economists in the 1960s assumed we would have 30 or less hour work weeks by the year 2000 because of increased productivity, and the fact that, from their vantage point of the 1960s, we had gone from 16 hour days in 1900, 12 hour days in 1920, and to 8 hour days starting with the then sweepingly radical Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. When RFK proposes things like shortening the work week, with a revitalized labor movement that has unionized the American South, people find that I am being presentist, if not delusional. Yet, the trajectory under RFK following LBJ in in matters of economic policy is far different than with the break from LBJ to Nixon regarding economic policy proposals. Presentism is a very bad thing in a history because it refuses to give credence to what people in an older time had seen as the history of the time before their time. In my novel, I tried to do precisely that, i.e. give credence to what people in an older time were relying on in the history which preceded them.
