Israel vs. Utopia. Joel Schalit

since the attacks, the problems it faces both within and beyond its borders haven’t changed a great deal since Americans woke up that day to a new world order. While America regarded 9/11 as a “day that will live in infamy,” many in Israel saw it as confirmation that the reality of everyday life—where constant vigilance has long been the price of freedom—had been successfully exported to its benefactor. This isn’t to imply that all Israelis were overcome with schadenfreude after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, even though certain Israeli politicians, such as current Prime Minister Benja-min Netanyahu, have repeatedly stated that the attacks were of value to Israel.

      The intensity of debates like l’affaire Judt within the Diaspora derives less from changes in Israel or the peace movement than from the decidedly subjective perception, emerging from the foreign policy of the Bush administration and its staunchest allies in the United Kingdom and Australia, that threats must be handled differently than they were in the ’90s. Just as the onset of the Cold War led to changes in how America treated its Left—with the grudging tolerance of the 1930s replaced by the frenzy of McCarthyism—9/11 gave both conservatives and more mainstream Jewish leaders a reason to pay attention to the Jewish progressives like Judt, and the “loony Left,” that they’d previously dismissed as being unworthy of engagement.

      GOING NATIVE, ABROAD

      These discussions in the Diaspora are so confusing in large part because they occur within that imaginary Israel in which both conservative and progressive Jews are so invested. The failure of both the Right and the Left in the Diaspora to see Israel as it actually is constitutes a subtle but pernicious form of intellectual imperialism. To the degree that American Jews perceive Israel as both extant at the pleasure of the U.S. government and dependent on its support (a conclusion belied, as I’ll argue later, by Israel’s complex relationship with Europe), they convince themselves that their position on Israeli policies must be heeded, even when that position is hopelessly colored by fantasy.

      This self-delusion is even more of a problem on the Left than the Right. Whereas conservatives of the post– 9/11 era have generally advanced an ideological agenda that champions idealism over realpolitik (there’s no other way to understand the Bush administration’s Middle East policy short of degenerating into conspiracy theory), progressives tend to believe they can see facts that others overlook. Noam Chomsky, a secular American Jew and one of the most prominent critics of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians since the Six-Day War, is a prime example. Chomsky consistently points out how the ruling powers in both the U.S. and Israel hide the truth about what has really transpired since the occupation of the territories in 1967. Although younger peace activists may not agree with Chomsky on many points (and may resent the way his stature draws attention from their efforts), they generally agree that they’re fighting a struggle for revelation. The trouble is that they’re actually maneuvering within a political field in which too much is already in plain view.

      This confidence in the power of truth telling reflects a positive conception of Israel that circulates within the Diaspora Left. Whereas conservatives love the coupling of religion and power embodied in the Israeli state, progressives often fetishize the Israeli public sphere, and they contrast the intensity and openness of the debates it fosters with the “censorship by the bottom line” that’s come to prevail in the United States.

      While conservatives generally regard this tendency on the Left as another way in which anti-Zionist Jews seek to undermine Israel, they’d do well to consider the matter more carefully. As critical as progressives may be of Israeli government policies, they share with their con-servative counterparts an investment in the continuation of the political reality that makes such debates possible; progressives sense that the very presence of open discourse is inextricably bound up with the positive aspects of Israeli society, and wish to see those elements constitute a more inclusive, truly multiethnic Israeli democracy.

      WHEN THE LEFT BANK REPLACED THE WEST BANK

      Israel’s tradition of self-criticism—by its liberal civil servants and left-wing activists, and by specific internationally distributed representatives of its media—has become a shining beacon of political virtue to many non-Israeli Jewish liberals. In a sense, these critics embody the political and moral conscience that the Israeli government and its foreign policy seem to have lost in the years following the Six-Day War. While valuing these aspects of Israeli life ultimately mirrors in some respects the conservative fetishization of Israel in the Diaspora, there’s still something redemptive about this strange coinvestment in the Jewish state, even if it’s based in a preference for the figure of Israel over the reality of Israel.

      As confused as the Diaspora Left may appear, its vision of reforming Israel as a state is real. The Left retains an admirably optimistic desire to correct Israel’s deficits in accordance with the standards of a European-style, multicultural social democracy. Diaspora Jews may not agree completely on whether a one-or two-state deal solves the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or whether a market-based or government-dominated public sector can adequately redress the country’s high levels of social inequality. But they all seem to assume that reform can indeed be created within—or perhaps despite— Israel’s highly overdetermined and confining historical context.

      When the Jewish Right goes after people like Tony Judt or the less provocative peace organizations on the Left, it risks ruining the remaining basis for solidarity within the Diaspora—the belief that a better Israel can be made from the current one. That’s not to imply that the Right’s fears are groundless. The emergence of a new Jewish Left in the Diaspora warrants some of the sensational rhetoric meted out by conservatives in media and academic environments. When taken to their logical conclusion, the political concerns of progressives do indeed contradict every defining feature of the Israeli status quo: religious traditionalism, racism, social inequality, and colonialism. That’s why, as Occupied Minds author Arthur Neslen explained in a January 2007 interview in Tikkun, ending Israel’s occupation of its remaining Palestinian territorial assets is a much bigger deal than simply withdrawing from the land itself.

      Advocating withdrawal from the Occupied Territories calls into question the character of the modern Israeli state and everything that comes along with it. You don’t change your character simply by taking a few steps backward. But it is crucial to remember that those features of the status quo, which have become more prominent in the four decades since the Six-Day War, are still not set in stone. The reality of contemporary Israel is more complex than that. And, while there is ample ground for despair, there’s also reason to hope. So much of the increasing polarization of debate is generational. Change is coming, no matter how fiercely some resist it.

      The question is whether this change is able to successfully manifest itself in an Israeli context.

      LOOKING OVER THE WALL