January 2004 Feature

Two Responses to Professor Tony Judt

My Anachronistic Home

October, 2003

Professor Tony Judt

New York University

tony.judt@nyu.edu

Dear Professor Judt,

Though I’m sure you weren’t wondering, I’ll begin by telling you that we had a pretty nice Shabbat here in Jerusalem. The weather was beautiful, we had a house full of guests, there was a wedding across the street that went way into the night. And nothing blew up. Kind of an idyllic day here in Jerusalem. For the most part.

But not entirely. You see, I made the mistake of re-reading your recent piece in the New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671) before heading off to shul in the morning. Big mistake. You can imagine how distressing it must be for someone living here in Jerusalem to read an article in a journal as respectable as the New York Review of Books that declares the State of Israel an “insecure, defensive microstate born of imperial collapse,” that the idea of a Jewish state is a “late-nineteenth century separatist project” and that Israel, an “anachronism,” should be replaced by a bi-national State of Jews and Arabs, bringing the Zionist project to an end.

Wow. That is one annoying piece of writing. Admittedly, you’re not the only intellectual suggesting that it’s time to declare the experiment called Israel a failure. A recent issue of The Nation has an article by Daniel Lazare saying more or less the same thing, and even Israelis like Meron Benvenisti have declared Zionism dead, agreeing with you that it’s time for Jews and Arabs to share one state before the river and the sea.

So if others have said this already, why did your piece bother me so much? Some of it, of course, was the parts that were plain silly. You note that Ehud Olmert, Israel’s deputy prime minister, has insisted that Israel still has the option of killing Arafat, which, you say, reveals Zionism’s “fascist” elements. “Political murder is what fascists do,” you write. I’ll be sure to point that out to the American troops still hunting for Osama bin Laden. Or your suggestion that the real reason for the war on Iraq was to improve Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East. You really expect us to believe that the United States would demolish an entire country for Israel’s sake, at the expense of billions of dollars, and then quibble with us about where to put the security fence? To say that that’s counter-intuitive would be to put things mildly.

But I can deal with the silly parts of your article. What is much harder for me is the not so subtle antisemitic underpinning of the whole argument. Now, I know how you’ll respond. You’ll either point to the fact that you yourself are Jewish (which, I suggest, has no bearing on whether the piece is antisemitic), or you’ll say, “There they go again. Any time anyone says anything negative about Israel, they reply, in some knee-jerk fashion, that it’s just antisemitism.” But you’ll be wrong if you say that. I agree with you that Israel could and should be doing more to promote some possibility of peace. And I don’t agree with everything that Ariel Sharon says or does. I wouldn’t compare him to the inventor of modern terrorism and the butcher of the Middle East, Yasir Arafat, as you do, but like you, I’m uncomfortable with many of Israel’s policies. No, you have a right to critique.

So what’s antisemitic about your article, you want to know? It’s the fact that not so deep down, you just wish we Jews would disappear. No, of course you don’t say it that clearly. That’s no longer politically correct in the academic circles you inhabit. So you just hint at it. “In a world where nations and people increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will ... where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them; in such a world, Israel is an anachronism.” But here’s the rub, Professor Judt. Many Jews (most, I suspect) don’t want to intermingle and intermarry at will. Of course, we have multiple identities, but we answer to one before the others. We take pride in the fact that Jews have survived for thousands of years. We believe that Jews have something to contribute (as do other cultures, obviously) to the world, and frankly, we don’t think of our Jewishness as an “elective identity.” To many of us it’s a gift, and a responsibility. We’re not around today because our ancestors walked away from their Jewish obligations, and we don’t plan to start walking away now.

The real problem, you see, isn’t that Israel is an anachronism. It’s that for you, Judaism, or Jews, is an anachronism. We are so very annoying in our insistence that we don’t want to blend in completely. Now, when you compare us to Islam today, I think we’ve done a pretty admirable job of blending in. If Islam were to embrace modernity and Western culture the way that we have, the world would be a much better place. The World Trade Center would still be standing, the United States would not be in Iraq, there would be no American troops in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be over, because rejectionist Palestinian leaders would have accepted the state that they were offered in both 1947 (by the United Nations) and in 2000 (by Ehud Barak’s government). If there’s any group you should be annoyed with for refusing to have “multiple identities,” it’s Islam, not Judaism.

But, of course, it’s not surprising that you focus on Jews, for example, and not Muslims. The world (including some Jews) has a history of having a problem with the Jews’ identities. It would be hard to imagine a Jewish community more blended into its surrounding culture than German Jewry in the early 1930s. Yet they can’t tell you much about their lives, you see, because their history didn’t end particularly well. They went up smokestacks.

Oh, no. I’ve slipped again. I know you don’t want to hear about the Holocaust. You’ve told us to drop it. “The circumstances of [Israel’s] birth have thus bound Israel’s identity inextricably to the Shoah, the German project to exterminate the Jews of Europe. As a result, all criticism of Israel is drawn ineluctably back to the memory of that project, something that Israel’s American apologists are shamefully quick to exploit.”

Well, if mentioning the Shoah is shameful or exploitative, I’m guilty as charged. Since you’re a historian, though, I suggest that what’s shameful is not our mentioning the Shoah, but your subtle minimizing of its scope. Because you, more than almost anyone else, know much better. The Shoah wasn’t just Germany’s project. If I remember my European history correctly (but correct me if I’m wrong, because you’re the Professor of European History), there were quite a few other countries who joined in this “project.” (“Project?” My God! That’s what you call the genocidal attempt to wipe out the Jews? A “project”? How clinical can someone possibly get?)

Nor was the target just “European Jewry.” Those are the Jews who were, indeed, destroyed. But Hitler had a grander plan. Surely, he didn’t plan for a “Museum of a Vanished Race” because he planned to leave non-European Jewry alive. When he was done, there were going to be no Jews left anywhere. It wasn’t about European Jewry, which would have been bad enough. It was about Jews everywhere. It was about eradicating Judaism, a “project” your one-state plan for the Middle East would actually further, but we’ll come back to that.

Even those who fought the Axis powers weren’t exactly wild about the Jews. Roosevelt closed the borders of the United States, Canada didn’t let the Jews in, and the British also sealed the shores of Palestine. In that regard, you’re in good company when you express your distaste for the Jews, and I suspect you’ll have good company for a long time to come. This month, you’ve got the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahatir Mohamad, who is annoyed with the Jews for ruling the world. But others will follow.

The problem for Mahatir Mohamad, and for you, is that the Shoah and its tactics are no longer politically correct. The world frowns on ethnic cleansing these days (which is why you accuse Israel of being willing to do that, even though you know it’s absurd; we’ve long had the power and have never done anything of the sort, and anyone who knows anything about Israeli public opinion knows that it’s unthinkable to the vast majority of Israelis), so one has to come up subtly with other ways to end not just Zionism, but the Jewish people. And that’s where your article comes in. Let’s just end the Jewish state and put an end to the fighting. Sounds reasonable. But you know what many others, Jews included, haven’t yet figured out. The end of the Jewish state is the end of Judaism as we know it.

Would there be some Jews left who would practice a several thousand-year-old religious tradition? Of course there would; you’re right. But the thriving, flourishing Judaism that the world knows today is a Judaism that can exist only with a Jewish state. How many novels are written in Hebrew outside of Israel? I’m not aware of a single one, but there are certainly very, very few. How significant is the production of Jewish art, or high culture, outside of Israel? Relatively speaking, there’s almost none. How many people would speak Hebrew — the language that allows access to Judaism’s critical and formative texts — if not for Israel? Very few, indeed.

But Israel has the Jewish cultural productivity that it does because it is only in Israel that Jews make up the majority of the population, it is only in Israel where a Jewish consciousness is part of the rhythm of the society, its media, its artists, its women and men of letters. Where else, as Israelis debate whether or not to follow through on a prisoner exchange that would free Elchanan Tenenbaum in exchange for hundreds of terrorists (even though Tenenbaum now appears to have been captured when he traveled to Abu Dhabi for some illegal purpose), would even secular citizens offer their opinion about a possible prisoner of war trade by citing the case of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the great Talmudic sage of the 13th century? The Maharam of Rothenburg, as he’s known, was also kidnapped, but when he heard that the Jewish community had raised the money for his ransom, he realized that if he were freed, other Jews would be similarly kidnapped, and he refused to allow the deal. He rotted in prison until his death. Many of us take pride in conversations like that, in dialogue in which the richness of Jewish history, law, and expression is often the foundation of our contemporary discourse. But only in a country that’s Jewish at its core will the radio waves be filled with the discussion of a 13th-century Talmudist as people opine on a current-affairs topic. It’s that sort of cultural richness which is unique to post-War Judaism; it’s that sort of cultural richness that only a Jewish culture in a Jewish state can provide. And it’s that cultural richness that you want to see eradicated.

No, I understand. You’ll say that you have no objection to that cultural richness surviving. You just want the political and military battles to cease. Enough bloodshed. Let’s share the land, and then Jews can flourish without having to die in a never-ending conflict. But there are solutions to this conflict, though you deny them, that do not require dismantling our country. They’ll be hard to implement, true, but they’re not impossible. So why advocate doing away with us? Because, Professor Judt, you know in a bi-national state, Jews would almost immediately become a minority. And with time, a rather small minority. How well would we fare there? Well, let’s ask ourselves. How many Westerners do you see running to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to Syria, to Iraq, to Iran or to Lebanon (for starters) so that they can live in an environment in which they’ll have complete and unfettered access to cultural expression and seem to be flourishing? (Even Israeli Arabs overwhelmingly say that they wouldn’t move to Palestine when the state is created; they’d rather live in the Jewish state.) Those are the kinds of places that you suggest we re-create in order to permit the Jews to thrive? Surely you jest.

And one final question, if you don’t mind. Why is it that when Ceausescu turns Romania into a living hell, no one suggests doing away with Romania? Or when Iraq menaces the world, the United States invades Iraq, not to destroy it, but to save it and return it to her people (with minimal success, I agree). When North Korea announces its arms proliferation program, the discussion is about how to contain North Korea; no one says that North Korea has no right to exist. Why do we hear claims that a country has no right to exist only when it comes to Israel? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?

Sadly, though, it’s not that odd. Throughout your article, you keep reminding us that the world has changed. But your brave new world doesn’t seem all that brave to me, or all that new. The French still have a country of their own and a place to root their culture. And the same with the Germans, and the Swiss, and the English, and so on. No, the only culture that you think doesn’t need or deserve a place to have roots is Jewish culture. The only people threatened by your view of the world are the Jews. No one’s talking about doing away with France. Alas, the world hasn’t changed almost at all. That’s the real problem.

Happily, though, reading your piece wasn’t the last thing that I did on Shabbat. When we got home from shul, the whole discussion of Elechanan Tenenbaum started again. Books flew off shelves, Jewish history suddenly came alive, and our kids avidly participated in the kind of discussion they could have only in a country where they have a right to believe that Jews should make distinctly Jewish decisions about the fates of other Jews. Not bad, given where the Jewish people was half a century ago. Then, at night, my wife and I went to the movies. We saw Costa-Gavras’s film, Amen. I know. More Holocaust. I apologize.

As we waited for the movie to begin, we couldn’t help but notice the makeup of the crowd. Four native Israeli thirty-somethings in the row in front of us, some American retirees in the row behind us, and to our left, two elderly men speaking French. The movie, as you know, isn’t an easy one to watch. But as powerful as it was, perhaps the most moving thing was what we heard during the very few scenes that take place in the concentration camps. It was, obviously, silent in the theater, except for the sound of the film, and except for the sound of one of the French men weeping as he saw the place in which he had undoubtedly been. You watch that movie and the world’s refusal to care, you hear the sounds of this man sobbing, remembering God only knows what, and I must tell you, Professor Judt, that with all the problems that Israel has, and they are many, I walked out of the theater with renewed gratitude that we have this place, and like my fellow Israelis, I suspect, determined that we’ll never give it up. Never.

Virtually every other major culture in the world has a home, Professor Judt. Almost everyone. Jews have learn-ed what happens when we don’t have one. We’ve been there, and we’re not going back. Everything about this place reminds us that we are home, and everything about our history reminds that we need this home.

I’m sorry that you find us so bothersome. I’m sorry that the only way you can see ending this conflict is to do away with us. But we’re home, Professor Judt, and your transparent objections notwithstanding, we’re here to stay.

Daniel Gordis

Thinking the Unthinkable

R. Ben

What an extraordinary and bewildering piece by Tony Judt in the October 23, 2003 issue of the New York Review of Books! In an essay entitled, “Israel: The Alternative,” he argues that Israel should be converted “from a Jewish state to a bi-national state.”

Now, Tony Judt is no minor character: he is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, has published extensively in many highly reputed journals, writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, and has appeared on the well-regarded “Charlie Rose Show.” Nor does the New York Review of Books publish essays that are not in keeping with its own editorial opinions. Try publishing something in that magazine that has a conservative perspective! Those familiar with the New York Review will know that the published articles are in keeping with the perspectives of its editors. They will also know that the journal has extensive circulation among prominent intellectuals and that it serves to legitimize the arguments it publishes. So, one should take the essays printed in the Review with some seriousness. Often the pieces appearing there are expressions of the opinions that are circulating in a highly influential community. I, for one, take its essays seriously. I propose to take the Judt essay seriously.

Judt writes, “It is an oddity among modern nations ... because it is a Jewish state in which one community — Jews — is set above others, in an age when that sort of state has no place.” So, Judt would dissolve Israel because “one community — Jews — is set above others.”

Now, several confusions are generated by that remark. To begin with, much of what he writes suggests that he would dissolve the Jewish state not for what it is now, a democracy, by Judt’s own account, but for what, he predicts, it will become in the future: “Israel can continue to occupy ‘Samaria,’ ‘Judea,’ and Gaza, whose Arab population — added to that of present-day Israel — will become the demographic majority within five to eight years: in which case Israel will be either a Jewish state (with an ever-larger majority of unenfranchised non-Jews), or it will be a democracy.” So, it is not what Israel is now, but what it will become, as Judt predicts it, that causes him to champion the elimination of the Jewish state now, as soon as possible. But what Israel will be in the future, and how it will deal with its demographics, remains to be seen. Yet, that’s the least of it.

It seems to us that there are many states around the world “in which one community ... is set above others,” but none of the same people who would end the Jewish state, indeed, few people I know, call for the dissolution of those states. Sometimes, reforms are called for, and most often the matter is just ignored, but if Jews have a state “in which one community, etc...,” then there is a vigorous call for its dissolution! Shall we bother to list all the states around the world that are dictatorships or monarchies, in which one or another ethnic group dominates and is “set above others”? Those states have a right to, and should, we might say, work out their problems, some of which are constitutional and/or endemic, but Israel has no right to exist and should be dissolved!

Many who protest the abuse of Arabs by Israel claim to do so on humanitarian grounds, yet they do not so vehemently and vigorously protest the abuse and suppression, the rape and murder of Arabs by other Arabs, let alone the suppression, the murder and the forced exodus of Jews in many Arab countries (but that, of course, is a different matter). Are we to conclude then that the abuse, the suppression, and the suffering of peoples (in particular, of Arab populations) is not what’s vexing — it’s their suppression and abuse by Jews that’s intolerable? Tribes, clans, parties, and religious sects suppress and abuse other tribes, clans, and religious groups throughout the Middle East, indeed, throughout much of the world, but few conclude that the countries involved have no right to exist. Little protest by those who are so profoundly moved by the Palestinian plight! Little call by sensitive poets for the indiscriminate murder of Syrian or Algerian oppressors. Little demand for banning all Saudis or Iraqis from professional conferences. No call for the dissolution of their countries. No question over their right to exist! It would appear that Arab suffering or “second-hand” citizenship is not disturbing to those who hate Israel and would deny it the right to exist. It is not unhappiness over Arab deprivation and death that is unacceptable, but that this should be at the hand of Jews. (It will be noticed that I will not here question the facts, though I certainly do. Let them be even as the anti-Israeli would have them. It’s what follows that confuses us.)

It might be added that many countries today exhibit the characteristics they have, the demographics they demonstrate, because of ethnic cleansing, e.g., Spain. Few call, as a consequence, for the dissolution of these countries. It should as well, I suppose, be added here that none of this is a defense of ethnic cleansing or of abusing Palestinians, whose plight should be of concern. Israel, like other states, also has thugs, rapists, murderers, and pimps.That is profoundly unfortunate and is of concern, but it does not follow that the state, therefore, has abdicated its right to exist. Israel’s right to exist should not depend upon its being better than any other country. It has, on the contrary, a right to be like other countries. Anything less is antisemitism.

A classic Marxist argument is that nation-states are by their nature oppressive and, in particular by current standards, anomalous. Many Marxists I know despise Jewish nationalism because they despise nationalism.1 Tony Judt writes: “In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will; where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed; where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them; in such a world Israel is truly an anachronism.” Judt thus adds a globalist, internationalist argument into the mix. A variant of the argument is the rejection of Jewish identity and particularism for a cosmopolitan humanism and trans-ethnic, trans-national universalism.

Now, I am not one to defend nationalism. But why do Marxists, who despise Jewish nationalism because it’s a nationalism, champion Palestinian nationalism? Tony Judt’s argument, as transcribed above, is applicable to most if not all nation-states. Yet, we don’t hear Judt calling for the dissolution of France or Germany, let alone China, Russia, or America. If nation-states are, indeed, instruments of oppression, dividing peoples — anachronisms, you might say — let us by all means dissolve them, eliminate artificial borders, and intermingle peoples. But why start with Israel and the Jews? Let’s dismantle all the other nation-states first, and then and only then, the Jewish state as well. After all, to dissolve the Jewish state first is to throw Jews back into a world of oppressive and divisive nation-states in which others, but not the Jews, will have homeland states — a world Jews have already known.2

But, to put the matter somewhat differently, if “multiple elective identities” are most desirable, why isn’t that available to Jews or to Israelis, and why is it that only Israelis, let alone all Jews sympathetic to Israel, are “constrained ... to answer to just one of them?” Why is association with Israel more “constraining” than being African-American, or French, or a parent? Why can’t being Jewish be one of my “multiple elective identities”? And why can’t one conceive of being Jewish to include a national identity?

Notes Judt: “Western civilization today is a patchwork of colors and religions and languages, of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, and many others....” Now, what is one to make of that? To begin with, “Christian Europe ... is [not] a dead letter,” pace Judt. Just go there and see. For every mosque, for every synagogue — and most of these are empty — there are a hundred churches, there are cathedrals galore, countless monasteries, cloisters, convents, and religious festivals, fully attended and Christian in intent, tradition, and purpose. But that aside, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Black Africans living in France, England, and Germany continue to have Algeria or Egypt or India or Pakistan or Nigeria as a homeland, as a country to which they might return under certain conditions, another nation for which they entertain special, if divided, affinities and loyalties. It is only Jews, then, who are to be denied a homeland state. To argue that Jews living in “Western Civilization” without a Jewish state would be like Indians or Pakistanis living in London or Paris is to draw a false analogy, and is, at best, an argument that runs both ways, since, it might be proposed that the ability of the Indian or Pakistani to live peacefully in London or Paris coincides, perhaps decisively, with the fact that he or she also has a homeland elsewhere.

Judt argues that if things continue in the direction they are going, Arabs in Israeli territories will soon outnumber Jews, and Israel will either cease being Jewish or cease being democratic. Therefore, he concludes, the nation should be converted into a bi-national state, whether, presumably, the Jews so wish the matter or not. (Of course, if Israel remains democratic, by Judt’s argument, the issue will take care of itself.) But if Israel becomes a non-Jewish, bi-national state, given Judt’s premise, Arabs will soon outnumber Jews, and the new, non-Jewish state will quickly become an Arab state with an Arab majority. Jews will, once again, be a minority in a non-Jewish state in a world without a Jewish state. But Jews have had two thousand years of that, and the experience, putting even the Holocaust aside, has not been a pleasant one. And if the new Arab majority becomes nationalistic, decides to engage in ethnic cleansing, or begins to oppress its minority (e.g., the Jews), or, indeed, decides to institute a Muslim theocracy, who will protect the Jewish minority? Tony Judt? Western liberals? Marxists? The European nations? The United Nations? Forget for a moment the world’s response to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe when they were being slaughtered by the millions. Consider, instead, Rwanda, Bosnia, Syria, Armenia, and even Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Why would any responsible leadership put the survival of its people at the mercy of “Western Civilization”?

Judt writes glibly, “A bi-national state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership.” I guess even Judt doesn’t think much of European leadership. “The security of Jews and Arabs alike would need to be guaranteed by international force — though a legitimately constituted bi-national state would find it much easier policing militants of all kinds inside its borders than when they are free to infiltrate them from outside....” And why, one wonders, would “the security of Jews and Arabs ... need to be guaranteed by international force” in “a legitimately constituted bi-national state”? Is it to “police” — whatever that means — the “militants” within its borders, something most countries handle without an “international force,” or is it concern that a majority will assault the minority, that a ruling party will abuse the security of some sector of the population, that the majority in the bi-national state (viz., the Arab majority)might embrace its militants instead of policing them? Then the Jewish minority can wait for the Western democracies to save them!

Judt writes: “Today, non-Israeli Jews feel themselves once again exposed to criticism and vulnerable to attack for things they didn’t do.... But this time it is a Jewish state, not a Christian one, which is holding them hostage for its own actions.... The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews.... The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.” But if non-Israeli Jews (even Israeli Jews) are “vulnerable to attack for things they didn’t do” ... etc., isn’t that antisemitism? Should we attack all Muslims or Japanese living in America or Europe for what corresponding Muslim nations have done, or for what Japan did in World War II? How does Judt feel about banishing all Israelis from academic and scientific symposia?3 But instead of vigorously attacking the antisemitism and those who may harbor and nourish it, instead of muting its “misdirected efforts, often by Muslims,” Judt puts the blame squarely on what he regards as the cause of the animosity, namely, and eerily, the existence of a Jewish entity. His solution to the rise of antisemitism, familiarly, is to rid ourselves of the Jewish entity.4

Judt maintains that it is “shameful” for Israeli apologists to invoke the Holocaust against “all criticism of Israel,” so I will skip over the Holocaust and simply refer to two thousand years of prejudice, mass murder, forced conversion, exile, pogroms, ghettoization, banishment, and exclusion. While no one wants to be an “apologist,” and one can, perhaps perversely, insist upon a distinction between “all criticism of Israel” and a call for its dissolution, it is not totally paranoid to suggest that even today, “[without] a Jewish state, Jewish minorities in Christian societies would peer anxiously over their shoulders” — sometimes with good reason. Judt might recall that a Jewish state was a dream of many Jews before the Shoah.

Judt notes that many Jews thought of Israel “as an insurance policy against renascent antisemitism or simply a reminder to the world that Jews could and would fight back.” Yes, that is correct. A Jewish state extends automatic Jewish citizenship to Jews around the world and welcomes immigration. Would those rights still be available to all Jews everywhere if Israel were ruled by an Arab majority? Who can guarantee that? Ten, twenty, fifty years out? Rising antisemitism, even if caused by a desire of Jews to have a Jewish state, as well as calls for the dissolution of the Jewish state, must only reinforce Jewish concern for and commitment to a Jewish homeland.•

About the author
Daniel Gordis (www.danielgordis.org) is Vice President of the Mandel Foundation, Israel, and the author, most recently, of Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House / Three Rivers Press).

R. Ben is a professor of philosophy who lives in New York City and who writes under a number of different pseudonyms including R. Ben.