Anti-Zionists should grow up (Jewish Chronicle)

It has long been one of the perverse talents of British middle-class activists to be able to devise campaigns which, instead of drawing attention to real grievances, divert attention away from them. I spent a lot of my early adulthood in observation of this phenomenon and recognise the inevitable moment when the movement stops being about the thing it says it was about and becomes about itself.

So it is with the boycott. Today the question in Britain is no longer what should be done about the Middle East, but how to spread or defeat the boycott. For almost everyone involved, the debate is — if the truth is admitted — hugely enjoyable. This isn’t really surprising, because it is all a fabulous diversion from the extraordinarily painful business of making or soliciting peace.

This is only one way in which the boycott movement is entirely counter-productive. It has emphasised the gulf between activists and memberships in all the unions where it has been debated (does anyone seriously believe that most Unison members want to boycott Israel?). And as Jonathan Freedland has pointed out, it has also forced an unhelpful solidarity upon those who are normally enemies, making it more, not less difficult for a hegemonic Israeli peace faction to arise.

All this should be bleeding obvious, yet somehow it is not. That’s why I believe there is something deeply irrational about the boycott movement. This “something”, I think, rests not in a genuine sense of injustice concerning the Palestinians, but in a negative ideology that calls itself anti-Zionism.

With there being no strong right-wing movement any more for the annexation of “Judea and Samaria” or the construction of Eretz Israel, anti-Zionism seems to me to be about as historically relevant as being anti-Common Market. Personally I am a non-Zionist, just as I am a non-Catalan-nationalist, and I would no more think of being “anti” than I would of campaigning against the desire of Australian aboriginals to reclaim their ancestors’ skulls from the British Museum. I am, however, anti-Likud.

So it is interesting to me to see that many of those involved in the boycott campaign use “Zionist” as a term of abuse, not analysis. For example, Mr Mark Elf, a heroic correspondent to the letters page of this and many other journals, describes Tony Blair as a Zionist almost entirely because he doesn’t like the PM.

He tells another critical correspondent on his Jews Sans Frontieres blog “not to lie or evade, I know that as a Zionist you find thus difficult to impossible…”. Used in this way, Zionist is just another word for bad, like the apartheid regime in South Africa was bad, or fascists are bad. It is a word to be applied to people whether they believe themselves to be Zionists or not.

As deployed by some agency entirely external to the Jewish communities — an Egyptian newspaper, say, or an Iranian TV channel — such a demonology is to be regretted but can at least be understood as an attitude towards the “other”.

But when it is used in this way by people who go to such lengths as Mr Elf or his ubiquitous comrade, Mr Tony Greenstein, constantly and at every opportunity to stress their Jewish origins, something else would seem to be going on.

Ah yes, say some readers, we are way ahead of you. Mr Elf and Mr Greenstein are archetypal “self-haters”. They are typical Jews who hate Jews (an organisation, come to think of it, which would complete the long, self-indulgent list of Jews For or Against This or That). They wish somehow to lose their unwanted Jewishness by currying favour with the goyische welt. They like the Nobel prizes and the comedy, but they don’t want to be associated with the big noses and loud behaviour in Waitrose.

There are Jews who hate Jewishness. In his excellent book about being brought up in a fascist household, Trevor Grundy describes his late discovery that his fiercely antisemitic mother was herself originally Jewish. Bad experiences at the hands of her step-father might have accounted for her pathological rejection of her own people.

But the very extremeness of her example indicates why I distrust the “self-hating” diagnosis as much as I distrust the Elfian definition of Zionism. Both are impertinences. “I don’t hate myself,” Mr Elf might say with justice, “I just hate you.”

Trevor Grundy’s mother hid her Jewishness. Jews Against Zionism (or whatever) luxuriate in their superior version of theirs. Indeed, their profession of Jewishness is as excessive as anybody’s on their hate-list, though it seems to exist for the sole purpose of negative deployment. I knew Tony Greenstein many years ago, when he reminded me of John McEnroe in a kefiyeh.

The boycotters, and especially the Jews for Boycotts, are not self-hating Jews — they’re adolescents. It isn’t themselves they hate, but Daddy and Mummy. In fact, they’re so vain they probably think this piece is about them.

Comments

[Sceptical Observer]

Why not vanish from the pages of history? Who needs them? Should anti-Semites grow-up too?

[Rysk]

A superlative piece exposing the adolescent behaviour and politics of the ''anti-zionist'' secular Jewish left in the U.K...

[John Richardson]

Dear David,
there seems to be an inconsistency at the heart of this article: you call Tony and Mark adolescent and self hating when they criticise Jews, but then go on to do exactly the same yourself. On the basis of your critique (of Jews) are you willing to also regard yourself as adolescent and self hating - or do these descriptions only apply to those whose political views you disagree with?
John

[Ori Livneh]

I can't quite articulate my dismay at the spectacle of Orwell's name pinned to the likes of David Aaronovitch, whose article "Anti-Zionists should grow up", is an embarrassing outburst of vitriol.

Aaronovitch calls the flurry of activity "a fabulous diversion" from the solemn and ennobling task of thinking hard about a solution for the conflict. I am always mystified when journalists adopt this line, since for the overwhelming majority of us in the international community, the solution has been clear for quite some time: the dismantling of settlements and an Israeli withdrawal to 4 June 1967 borders, with minor and mutual adjustments, as per the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which was launched again earlier this year.

The boycott initiative is not a tantrum. It is programmatic, not punitive. Its proponents have put forward a comprehensive vision for peace, which echoes (point-for-point, it seems) the Arab initiative. This vision enjoys near unanimous support in the international community, with the exception of Israel and the United States, who have single-handedly blocked it for over three decades. The idea behind the boycott, as far as I can gather, is not to punish Israel but to apply strategic pressure on it to withdraw and allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.

Should we be less sweeping and target the Likud? This might have been a viable strategy, if not for the lamentable fact that the business of the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands has gone on under the banners of all three major political parties, and with their explicit support. Since Rabin every single labor government has erected new settlements. Occupation is not the policy of the Israeli right, nor of the left: it is the policy of Israel, and it will continue until significant international pressure comes to bear.

Meanwhile, those of us who support the boycott and happen to be Jewish will have to continue pinching ourselves to suspend our disbelief when we read that an Orwell award-winning journalist accuses us of working out our adolescent frustrations with mommy and daddy.

[Mark Aston]

With respect Ori. The issue of settlements is just a smokescreen and not a very good one. We can bicker all day long about Israel withdrawing to the pre-67 lines but when it really comes down to it, when we try asking more pertinent questions like 'will self-determining Jews ever be accepted in Palestine', I think the answer is clearly a 'no'. This has been the case since Jews started emigrating to Palestine, this, sadly, will always be so so long as there is a persistant political and militant Islam.

History shows us that Jews have accepted a partition plan several times but sadly, and with terrible consequences for the Palestinians and Israelis, partition was rejected by the other. My point again, it's not about a 2-state solution is it, really? Be honest, because we're all just kidding ourselves.

[william]

im sure there are many but, i dont recall any boycotts actually resulting their stated objective.
nope, i cant think of one.

?

[danny broderick]

This is all good sense. But I do think there is something much deeper going on with the boycotters. Something psychological. Narcissistic. It is of a type with the 'not in my name' brigade. Precious egos feeling they have to be asserted somehow.

[dan]

Can i just post ROFL at the last line? or are acronyms frowned upon?

[Mark Elf]

I must be naive as well as adolescent. I actually thought that the Jewish Chronicle would publish my response to the above article.
It's here:

Dear Sir

Could David Aaronovitch get over the fact that some of us who do not agree with Zionism and the State of Israel are perfectly comfortable with being Jewish and will insist on identifying ourselves as such? If he could then he could refrain from the personal abuse and get on with a meaningful, indeed analytical, debate.

In my blog post that he mentions, I referred to Tony Blair as a Zionist in the context of his being appointed envoy for the Middle East quartet whilst being an honorary patron of the Jewish National Fund which was founded early last century to acquire land for Jews only (and forever) in the then Palestine. It was established by the World Zionist Organisation. The World Zionist Organisation still exists and some of its members clearly wish to retain "Judea and Samaria" as does the person I was addressing in the quote David Aaronovitch lifted from my comments section from April 2006.

I recognise that there are various Zionist orientations but I use the term Zionist at a minimum to mean someone who believes that people of immediate Jewish origin from around the world should have more settlement and citizenship rights in Israel than non-Jewish natives who are there or who are from there. And there are some Zionists I like, I just don't like their Zionism.

For a "heroic correspondent" of the JC and other papers I have only had one letter in the JC and that criticised David Aaronovitch for sneering at Jews for Justice for Palestinians for inviting him to sign their statement and then criticising Independent Jewish Voices for not inviting him to sign theirs. I have also had three letters published in the Observer, again criticising what he had written, not him personally, and in context too. None of the letters refer to my being Jewish. I only mention it if I think it is relevant to what is being said.

On that matter, I'm sure that David Aaronovitch has gone on record saying that he is not actually Jewish and yet he lectures others on when and how one can identify as Jewish. I don't even accept that from other Jews. Why should I?

Still, in these ecumenical times I think it's nice that a non-Jew such as David Aaronovitch can write for the Jewish Chronicle but when he invokes stereotypes like "big noses and loud behaviour" I'd say he's crossed a line. Surely in the JC a Jew's anti-Zionism is preferable to a gentile's anti-Semitism.

Yours faithfully

Mark Elf
Jews sans frontieres

[Lobby Ludd]

"In fact, they’re so vain they probably think this piece is about them."

But it is though, isn't it, Mr Aaronovitch?

[Sceptical Observer]

Mark Elf wrote: I recognise that there are various Zionist orientations but I use the term Zionist at a minimum to mean someone who believes that people of immediate Jewish origin from around the world should have more settlement and citizenship rights in Israel than non-Jewish natives who are there or who are from there. And there are some Zionists I like, I just don't like their Zionism.
My response: You could also use the term Zionist at a minimum to mean someone who believe that people of immediate Jewish origin from around the world should have right to eat non-Jewish natives in Israel and than condemn Zionism as the cannibalistic movement. I am also disgusted that you shamelessly use the fact of you being Jewish to add validity to your arguments. There is a place of honour for every “super-progressive” Jew like you in every “How to destroy Israel” meeting. Look, they say, here is someone who hate Zionism and he is a Jeeeew. Even some Jeeews can’t stand this cannibalistic movement that is responsible for the all problems in the World.

[dan]

'In fact, they’re so vain they probably think this piece is about them."

But it is though, isn't it, Mr Aaronovitch? '

I think you are missing the irony of the closing statement - which itself is a reference to a popular song. Hence my earlier ROFL...

[mark hearne]

People who are adherants to ridiculous neanderthal religions have got to really allow other idiots to be equally idiotic.
Respect the idiots!

[Dr. Irene Lancaster]

I may have missed something here, but if Palestinians are entitled to their State, are Jews not entitled to theirs?

And no, this does not mean that all Jews should move to Israel, but they rightly now have that choice, if they wish.

[The New Centrist]

“I can't quite articulate my dismay at the spectacle of Orwell's name pinned to the likes of David Aaronovitch, whose article "Anti-Zionists should grow up", is an embarrassing outburst of vitriol.”

LMFAO! Then you definitely won’t like this:

http://newcentrist.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/forgetting-orwell%E2%80%99s-lessons-for-the-left-useful-idiots-and-fellow-travelers-in-the-21st-century/

Forgetting Orwell’s Lessons for the Left: Useful Idiots and Fellow Travelers in the 21st Century

Enjoy!

--The New Centrist

[Neanderthal]

"People who are adherants to ridiculous neanderthal religions ..."
Sorry, Dan, we Neanderthals have nothing to do with religion (and religious wars, at that).
If you wanted to say that you would like to see all religions exterminated like us, well, that´s a goal.
Hope the individuals who need justification for torture cannot find any other soon...