How Liberal A Zionism?
I’m not asking Israel to be Utopian. I’m not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I’m actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel’s security and for its status as a Jewish state.
That’s Peter Beinart, from Part II of his dialogue with Jeffrey Goldberg (Part I and Part III for completeness freaks) prompted by Beinart’s instantly-famous article in the New York Review of Books.
If it’s not obvious, I want to highlight the key words of the paragraph:
[T]o allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis . . . would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.
Beinart, meet Lieberman Lieberman, meet Beinart.
Lieberman’s perspective on the conflict is admirably direct and clear. He favors a partition of the Land of Israel, such that the Jews wind up on one side and the Arabs wind up on the other, as much as possible. Because there are regions in Israel inside the Green Line with concentrated Arab populations and few Jews, he wants to transfer these regions to an independent Palestinian State, in exchange for the major settlement blocs on the other side of the Green Line. He believes that a “Jewish state” is a state that represents the expression of the national spirit of the Jewish people and whose essential loyalty is to that same people. He wants to define “Jewish people” basically by self-identification – he’s not interested in having rabbis meddling in the matter – and ditto for what the national spirit of that people might be. Anybody who wants to stay in Israel and who isn’t Jewish should somehow formally demonstrate loyalty to the state in order to have the privileges of citizenship.
From which part of Lieberman’s analysis of Israel’s situation does Beinart dissent?
I assume that Beinart would redraw the map so that there wouldn’t be Israeli enclaves within Palestinian territory – but that’s not a fundamental difference. More fundamentally, I assume Beinart would consider the demand that Arab’s take a loyalty oath to retain their citizenship to be insulting and/or racist. But surely he would admit that his own statement – that the Arab population can never be granted equal citizenship without Israel ceasing to be a Jewish state – would be viewed similarly by any Israeli Arab. Right?
The situation of Israeli Arab citizens within the Green Line is in no way comparable to the situation of the stateless Palestinian Arabs on the other side of the line. Israeli Arabs vote, have access to government and the legal system, etc. But Beinart is right to describe them as second-class citizens. In a variety of ways, Israel discriminates in favor of Jewish communities and against Arab ones. While Arabs vote, Israel’s electoral system encourages communal voting, so the Arab vote goes predominantly to Arab parties who would not be accepted as coalition partners even by a left-wing government. Its education system by design keeps the two communities largely separate, but the Arab sector does not have control of its own part of the system. Is this what makes Israel a Jewish state?
And what would truly equal citizenship mean, after all? In a formal sense, the main thing it would mean would be an end to formal discrimination against Arab Israelis, which, in turn, would primarily mean an end to the settlement enterprise within the Green Line. Does Beinart think the end to this enterprise would mean an end to the Jewish state?
For many Arabs, it’s understood to mean granting them national minority status or something similar, which would give them greater communal rights and immunities, including control of their own education system. Does Beinart think granting such a status would mean an end to the Jewish state?
Some would argue that the Law of Return would have to be scrapped, but I don’t see why this would be – by definition, the Law of Return only applies to non-citizens, so it can’t make anybody a second-class citizen. What would have to change is aspects of immigration law that discriminate against the spouses of Arab citizens relative to the spouses of Jewish citizens. Does Beinart think eliminating this discrimination would mean an end to the Jewish state?
Most fundamentally but least-formally, equal citizenship would mean being treated like part of the general polity, and not as permanent outsiders. It would mean that, on questions affecting the country as a whole, Arab votes and voices would count. Which, right now, they mostly don’t.
If the answer to these questions is “yes,” how liberal is this liberal Zionism? And how surprising is it that young American Jews who are comfortable in their liberalism sense something problematic with Israel’s status quo than is not reducible to the problems in the territories?
I’ve argued for years and continue to maintain that the territories are a distraction that have enabled Israel to avoid its most fundamental question: what is a Jewish state? The usual answer is: it’s a state that has a substantial Jewish majority, and which therefore can organize itself around Jewish concerns. But that’s just not an adequate answer. If being a Jewish state just means being a state of refuge for the Jewish people, then yes, a demographic majority matters, but I don’t see the justification for permanent second-class status for the Arab minority, nor for treating their concerns as national afterthoughts. And if being a Jewish state means something more than this, then what is it? The National Religious have their answer. The ultra-Orthodox have their answer. What’s Beinart’s answer? And how is it different from Lieberman’s?
The Organization of the Islamic Conference counts 57 member countries. Fifty-seven Islamic countries. Is a single Jewish country too many?
Should Saudi Arabia allow Jews to return to Mecca and Medina?
— fw · May 24, 06:17 PM · #
That line struck me too. I think Beinart probably misspoke or was misquoted. Maybe he meant to refer to Palestinians in the territories.
— matt · May 24, 06:23 PM · #
Why not offer buyouts to Arab citizens of Israel, just as Israel bought out Jewish settlers in the Sinai and the Gaza Strip to get them to leave? Offer, say, a quarter of a million per Arab family of five to permanently leave Israel and renounce all claims to Israeli citizenship.
— Steve Sailer · May 25, 02:51 AM · #
Zionism can’t be liberal. Fundamental religious, ethnic, or sectarian characters for nation states are antithetical to liberalism and the essential tenets of egalitarian democracy. No white Americas, no Christian nations, no Muslim kingdoms, no Jewish homelands. That’s a position that was radical hundreds of years ago and is radical now, but it’s also an inextricable piece of the governing philosophy which we say is our bedrock.
— Freddie · May 25, 03:56 AM · #
“And what would truly equal citizenship mean, after all? In a formal sense, the main thing it would mean would be an end to formal discrimination against Arab Israelis…”
Is that what liberalism means in the U.S.? That hasn’t exactly been the liberal project when it comes to minorities for roughly 40 years. Why wouldn’t liberalism in Israel come to mean the same as means in the U.S.: affirmative action for minorities, and deconstruction of majority nationalism?
Should the benefits of disparate impact law apply to Israeli Arabs? If Arabs make up, say, 20% of the population but less than 20% of the top scorers on the fireman’s hiring test, should the test be thrown out as having disparate impact?
Should the school textbooks in Israel be rewritten to emphasize Arab heroes?
Should the President of Israel encourage illegal immigration by Arabs, saying “Family values don’t stop at the Jordan River?”
How far down does the rabbit hole go when Israel decides to be “liberal”?
— Steve Sailer · May 25, 07:15 AM · #
“Zionism can’t be liberal. Fundamental religious, ethnic, or sectarian characters for nation states are antithetical to liberalism and the essential tenets of egalitarian democracy. No white Americas, no Christian nations, no Muslim kingdoms, no Jewish homelands. That’s a position that was radical hundreds of years ago and is radical now, but it’s also an inextricable piece of the governing philosophy which we say is our bedrock.”
That’s a pretty strict construction for “liberal.” In that formulation, can there be “American” Americas? “Greek” Greeces? (And I hope you’ll take those classifications charitably and not group them with Palin-style chauvinism, because they’re not.) Or is every ethnic identifier (assuming you’d agree those are ethnic identifiers) ineligible in a liberal state? Outside of a single, hyper-inclusive, global nation, is a liberal state possible? I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that being true, by the way, but I wonder whether classic liberals would be comfortable taking such an extreme position. Enlightenment has always been about progression over time, and taking an absolute measure at this stage of Israel’s – and Zionism’s – development seems unfair, and counterproductive.
Another approach: It’s true that in the US we tend to define Judaism as a religion first, ethnicity second. But that’s not true just about anywhere else in the world, and certainly not how Judaism (and most Jews, at least outside of the US) self-defines. I think a lot of people would read your (Freddie’s) argument as a misunderstanding of what Judaism is — i.e. the distinction between the Christianness of Greeks vs. their Greekness.
Along the same lines, Noah, it’s not clear to me from this post what it is you find insufficient about defining a Jewish state as a national entity organized around the concerns of Jews. (A nicely-worded formulation, btw.) What is America if not a nation organized around the concerns of Americans? That’s not a rhetorical question, and I’d be curious to read any answers that could present a modern country with a purpose that goes much beyond the self-determination of its members.
As for the settlements being a “distraction” — what seems to be the consistent distraction in the heady world of the blogosphere is not settlements, but rather these never-ending philosophical formulations that trail news of Israel about like a row of baby ducks. I know Israel is very interesting to many people for its history and peculiar religious significance, but too often honest interest seems to me to transform into the kind of first-principles scrutiny that not only Israel but in fact no country at all could withstand. And while I don’t mean to attack you for this in particular, your wording happened to highlight one of the unlikelier (but frequent) casualties of this bad habit: the rights and future of Palestinians. If you were to write this sentence over again: “the territories are a distraction that have enabled Israel to avoid its most fundamental question: what is a Jewish state?”, would you pause to consider whether Israel’s “most fundamental question” might need to take a back seat to the immediate and pressing human/political rights catastrophe that is the West Bank settlement project?
For all of the quibbling I could (and have) done with Beinart’s piece, what I did like about it was its insistence that American Jews reengage in the practical side of Israeli politics. If there were one thing I could say to smart American Jews like Noah here it would be to give the first-principles argument a rest, and do more for Israel and Palestine as they exist today. Regardless of our or Beinart’s politics, that’s a shift that strikes me as fundamentally healthy.
— max · May 25, 02:26 PM · #
Of course, Freddie, like Tweedledum, is free to define words however he chooses. But plenty of countries which are generally considered “liberal democracies” define eligibility for citizenship in terms of ethnicity or ancestry (sometimes called “blood citizenship”). So Freddie should, if communication is his goal, acknowledge that he is using private definitions of the terms “liberal” and “democracy.”
— y81 · May 25, 03:08 PM · #
I get stuck on the question of viability. Seems to me the best bet long term is a quiet pan-humanism with money and lots of guns, not a loud ethnic nationalism in a cauldron of antagonists.
Then again, I also think the best bet long term would be to move away from arid climates filled with primitive, violent, sexually repressed religious fanatics who want to kill you. Maybe go to an underpopulated US state and set up shop there, like the Mormons did in Utah.
In terms of “sufficient deterrent against your neighbor,” seems to me that shot gun beats nuclear annihilation on the whole peace-of-mind scale.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · May 25, 05:40 PM · #
>“From which part of Lieberman’s analysis of Israel’s situation does Beinart dissent?”
The concept of a Jewish state is completely illiberal, at least as the term “liberal” is currently defined. It used to be that liberals believed in separate countries for every people, but that’s ancient history. Nowdays an ethnic state like Israel violates liberalisms first commandment – thou shalt celebrate ethnic diversity.
Liberalism makes an exception to this for non-white people, who are allowed or even expected to have their own states.
— Steve · May 25, 06:38 PM · #
>” is every ethnic identifier (assuming you’d agree those are ethnic identifiers) ineligible in a liberal state?”
Ethnic identifiers are a neccessity in a liberal state. How can we measure our diversity without them? But the state itself must not be defined as the homeland of a particular ethnic group. That would be “Nazism” according to liberals, and according to Jewish liberals in particular.
>“Along the same lines, Noah, it’s not clear to me from this post what it is you find insufficient about defining a Jewish state as a national entity organized around the concerns of Jews. (A nicely-worded formulation, btw.) What is America if not a nation organized around the concerns of Americans?”
Sophistry. “Americans” as defined by liberals is a term empty of any real meaning. It simply means “people living in America”.
“Jews” is a much more narrow and exclusive term. It certainly does not mean “people living in Israel”. If “Americans” were defined as people of a particular ethnic background your argument would have some merit. But such an idea is antithetical to liberalism.
— Steve · May 25, 06:53 PM · #
I’m opposed to the nation-state, which happens to be a very new invention, in anything resembling its current form, and one explicitly and unambiguously invented to make conscription of soldiers into the imperialist project easier.
— Freddie · May 25, 07:32 PM · #
Noah:
In general, Jewish liberals in the United States have not been satisfied with “an end to formal discrimination against” African-Americans, but have instead pushed on for affirmative action for blacks. Why should Israel be different?
— Steve Sailer · May 25, 10:33 PM · #
Maybe Israeli Arabs aren’t “second class citizens’—and maybe Beinart really does not agree that they should continue to be so—that agreement is only a rhetorical device to grease the argumentative wheels for the (erroneous) statement that they are second-class citizens in the first place. So both authors, the author here and Beinart actually agree (inaccurately) that Israeli Arabs are second class citizens and neither really accepts that situation or would support Leiberman.
— Paul Freedman · May 26, 12:47 AM · #
Paul, if you live in a democracy, where the majority has the power, and you are prevented from ever being in the majority, as even Beinart wants, then in what sense could you ever be a full-fledged citizen? How can you have an egalitarian democracy when the state is set up so that you don’t ever have the opportunity to be the majority party?
— Freddie · May 26, 03:56 AM · #
“Paul, if you live in a democracy, where the majority has the power, and you are prevented from ever being in the majority, as even Beinart wants, then in what sense could you ever be a full-fledged citizen?”
It’s funny how, from roughly Tom Paine to Harry Truman, liberals used to be in favor of majority rule.
— Steve Sailer · May 26, 05:48 AM · #
It’s possible to be a fully liberal Zionist, provided you believe that having an Arab Israeli citizen as, say, Prime Minister or Defense Minister would not impair Israel’s ability to defend itself from its enemies. If you disagree with that proposition, at some point you’ll have to compromise either your Zionism or your Liberalism.
— Julie · May 26, 09:13 AM · #
It’s funny how, from roughly Tom Paine to Harry Truman, liberals used to be in favor of majority rule.
I’m not sure what you’re saying— I’m pointing out that Beinart and almost everyone wants to artificially prevent an Arab majority in Israel. But to both want this and to say that you are in favor of egalitarian democracy is flatly contradictory.
— Freddie · May 26, 08:13 PM · #
Freddie says:
“I’m not sure what you’re saying— I’m pointing out that Beinart and almost everyone wants to artificially prevent an Arab majority in Israel. But to both want this and to say that you are in favor of egalitarian democracy is flatly contradictory.”
That’s the genius of my idea that the international Jewish community should offer voluntary buyouts to Arab Israelis to get them to permanently leave Israel. Nobody’s human rights are violated, and the Jewish voting majority in Israel is preserved without Jim Crow-style trickery.
— Steve Sailer · May 26, 11:41 PM · #
[Lieberman] wants to transfer [Arab] regions to an independent Palestinian State
1. The idea is impractical since only a minority of Israeli Arabs live in an places that are next to the West Bank border and which can be easily handed over to a Palestinian state. The majority of Israeli Arabs live in the Galilee.
2. Lieberman himself is not serious about his own project – he’s in a position of power but has done nothing to advance his ‘plan’.
the international Jewish community should offer voluntary buyouts to Arab Israelis to get them to permanently leave Israel
I’m not sure that post-Madoff this is possible ;-)… anyway, I very much favor reparations to Palestinian refugees as part of a permanent settlement – which is similar in a way. But Israeli Arabs don’t really form much a threat that needs to be addressed by such unprecedented measures.
Why wouldn’t liberalism in Israel come to mean the same as means in the U.S.: affirmative action for minorities, and deconstruction of majority nationalism?
Well it would certainly be an improvement over what exists now – an increasingly intolerant, paranoid & bigoted government & society. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have a kinda-sorta affirmative action setup, which I’m not thrilled about, but which one can live with. In any case, I can imagine that if given free rein, Israeli Arabs would be more eager to establish their own separate institutions than wanting than to forcefully crash into Jewish ones.
— Danny · May 27, 07:46 PM · #
Beinart says nothing more than that there should be some distinction between Arab and Jewish Israelis. We don’t know what distinction(s);it might range from slave status to disqualification from certain distinctly religious functions/institutions. Yet all commenters agree that Beinart’s fragment of a thought is sufficient to decide whether Israel can be a liberal state. The purity of the definitions is exquisite.
— sklein11 · May 30, 01:33 PM · #