A response to Tony Karon’s “How Jewish is Israel?”

Michael Anbar, Ph.D.

The provocative arguments in Tony Karon’s essay “How Jewish is Israel?” (Ha’aretz, May 19, 2006), call for a prompt response. On superficial reading, this essay sounds like a run of the mill ultra-liberal political statement, but on second reading one finds it to be a vitriolic attack on Judaism. It is possible that the Editor of Ha’aretz did not realize the rancorous implications of this essay before endorsing its publication.

Karon touches on profound issues such as the meaning of being a Jew, or a Zionist, of nationality as compared to nationalism, of misojudaism (anti-Semitism), and the roots of the Arab-Jewish conflict, all with amazing superficiality and perhaps even with malice.  He seems to believe that universalism and humanism, which happen to be offsprings of  Judaism, have obviated all the overwhelming issues cited above.

The only point on which I agree with Karon is that Israel (i.e., the modern State of Israel with an overwhelming Jewish majority) is not, and cannot be today the source of Jewish Identity. A point that has been the declared position of A.B. Yehoshua’s, with whom also I strongly disagree.

However, this is just a minor point in Tony Karon’s assault on Zionism. Zionism, i.e., the urge to regain political independence in the ancient historical homeland of the Jewish people, is undoubtedly a major source of Jewish identity. Zionism is rooted in the Bible and has been interwoven with Jewish thought ever since. It is an integral part of Jewish poetic liturgy and of the messianic idea  that was borrowed later by Christianity.

It stands to simple logic that the Jewish Diaspora, glorified by Karon, is a meaningless concept without Zionism, just as the Armenian or Tibetan diasporas are meaningless without Armenia or Tibet, respectively. Diaspora means scattering – scattering from where? This simple notion seems to have escaped Tony Karon. I wish he had read “Do they understand what Zionism is all about?” in my book “Israel and its Future.”  Karon’s sweeping statements that “Before the Holocaust, Zionism had been a minority tendency among Western Jews, and scarcely existed among those living in the Muslim world” is patently untrue.

The concept of Jewish nationhood has not been invented in the 19^th Century, as claimed in Karon’s essay.  Would he have remembered history, he would have realized that any nationality evolves together with the perception of its history. The Bible is a manifestation of Jewish, and later of Christian historical perspectives.  The Bible is not a lesser manifestation of Jewish national historical perspective than the writings of Tukidides or Tacitus were manifestations of Greek or Roman nationhood, respectively. “Bnei Yisrael” or “Am Yisrael,” i.e., The “People of Israel,” is an ancient tenet of nationhood of the Jewish people. Moreover, the Islamic “Umma,” which now threatens our civilization, is a religion-driven, exaggerated perception of nationhood that turned into violent nationalism. It is a concept that had been borrowed from the Bible to become utterly distorted and abused. 

Karon’s idealized antinational universalism “scorning national boundaries”, advocated primarily by some Jewish secular intellectuals, contradicts human social behavior as well as history. Supranational universalism, caricatured by the nationalistically-driven UN, is likely to be as short-lived as Zamenhof’s Esperanto, the “universal” language that ignored the existence of non-Western  cultures, or Marx’s universal communism that has ignored basic economics (two other inventions of naïve Jewish intellectuals). 

The lack of historical perspective or flagrant denial of history is reflected in Karon’s claim that the State of Israel was established as a consequence of the Holocaust “at the expense of another people.”  Let me first remind Mr. Karon that hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the Land of Israel a long time before the Holocaust. The political independence of the Jewish state from the British Mandate paralleled the political independence of other British and French neighboring colonial territories in the Middle East, including  Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq and Egypt. Any historian will tell you that with or without the UN, Great Britain would not have retained its colonial rule of the Land of Israel.  The Arab propaganda claim, supported by Karon, that the Jewish State was “created” by the UN (by a mistake that must be reversed!) is a historic fallacy. 

Moreover, the UN 1947 resolution to “establish” the State of Israel on just a small part of the original territory assigned under a British Mandate to the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1920, was an attempt to neutralize opposition of the Arabs who continued to defy international law by their invasion of May 1948. The UN recognition of all other states, cited above, was virtually automatic, i.e., nobody gives the UN credit for their establishment.

The Islamic assault on Israel is not a unique phenomenon. Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the PLO-Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1975 were other examples of Islamic aggression against countries in the Middle East under non-Islamic rule.  I wonder how these highly relevant recent historical events could have been missed by Tony Karon.  How does he reconcile and accept Islamic unmitigated universal aggression in his borderless universalism? Why does he single out Jewish defensive response to Islamic aggression as unethical?

One should feel free to criticize the policies of the State of Israel, but one must not question the legitimacy of its very existence, as implied by Karon.  The existence of a Jewish independent state in the ancient Jewish homeland cannot be denied by any Islamic foe or leftist ideologue, just as is the case with France, Greece or Ireland (even before the latter gained political independence).

As for Karon’s statement: “the expense of another people,” it is not clear which nation  he refers to. Is it the Arab nation? Or is it the artificial “Palestinian nation” created after 1948 by the Arab league - the umbrella political organization of the Arab nation - as a tool to dislodge the Jews from the Middle East? For the sake of historical accuracy, it must be repeated here that the “Palestinian nation,” which is probably the entity Mr. Karon is referring to, has no history, no distinct language, literature, religion or other distinctive cultural features (minimal requirements defining any nation) prior to its artificial creation by Arab political leadership in reaction to the massive return of Jews to their homeland.

Following Mr. Karon’s reasoning the call for political independence by the Kurds, Maronites, Copts, Berbers, Druz, Armenians, Assyrians, or any other minority in the Arab empire should be perceived to be at “the expense of another people.” According to Mr. Karon the Arab nation seems to be immune to political national aspirations of its oppressed minorities. The State of Israel, which he accuses of being a colonial oppressor, is the only non-Arab, non-Muslim entity that established political independence within the Arab multi-state empire. This is Israel’s major political problem. One wonder if Mr. Karon, who has been ignoring so many historical facts, is an avowed Arab sympathizer or perhaps a Jew hater? I am afraid that the latter is correct, as attested by his anti-Zionist stance.

It is virtually impossible to separate Zionism, in its broader sense (having nothing to do with politics of the Jewish state), from Judaism. Zionism implies the urge for Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel, emanated from Zion, i.e., Jerusalem, the ancient Davidic capital.  Even members of Neturei Karta (“Guardians of the City”), the messianic ultra-orthodox Jewish sect in Jerusalem who disavow a mundane Jewish state, waiting for the coming of the Messiah, are essentially ardent Zionists – the Messiah being the descendent of King David who will rule in Jerusalem at the End of Days. This is also true of Christians who believe in the second coming of the Messiah, a descendent of the House of David, to the holy City of Jerusalem -- they too are implicitly Zionists. Furthermore, sovereignty implies nationalism, which so much despised by Karon. By considering Zionism to be a transient phenomenon in Jewish history he manifests blind hatred or utter ignorance.  Consequently, as an anti-Zionist universalist, Tony Karon must be classified as a hater of Judaism.

Mr. Karon declares himself to be a “rootless cosmopolitan” Jew. His demonstrable disregard for history and historical perspective, makes him an eccentric self-hating Jew. Misojudaism is not limited to non-Jews, as demonstrated by Noam Chomsky. Misojudaism predated Christianity but was adopted by it, precipitating the Holocaust. However, today the standard bearers of misojudaism, in a addition to secular, liberal universalists such as Tony Karon, are the Muslims.

The Arab Israeli conflict is not a manifestation of anti-imperialism, as stated by Karon, but of Islamic misojudaism. Islamic misojudaism is rooted in the Qur’an where Jews are described as subhuman beings - descendents of apes and pigs. It is rooted in and modeled after the atrocious assaults of Mohammad on Jewish tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. Mohammad succeeded to eradiate all the Jews of Arabia and this tradition is driving the current Arab assault on Israeli Jews. Mohammad used deceit and treachery to defeat and conquer his Jewish victims, and this Islamic tradition is being followed today religiously (in both meanings of the word).

There exists the notion that one must distinguish between motivations of secular and religious Muslims. However, just as medieval Christian misojudaism was deeply impregnated in secular German culture, leading to the Nazi Holocaust, vicious hatred of “infidels” is ingrained also in secular Muslims. This hatred has been manifested by the “secular” Muslim Turks in the atrocious massacre of the Armenians, in the brutal expulsion of the Greek Orthodox Christians from Asia Minor, and in the systematic destruction of Christian cultural vestiges in the Turkish controlled region of Cyprus. 

Some Israeli politicians have been ignoring this fact when dealing with the “secular” PLO, whom they believed to be free of malignant religious prejudice. While they must have been bitterly disappointed when “secular” Yasser Arafat appeared on Arab TV screaming: “Jihad, Jihad, Jihad!” they continue to delude themselves believing that an amiable political agreement between an Israeli peace-loving government and the militant Arabs is possible.  Karon seems to imply that Israel must surrender its Jewish “nationalistic” Zionist identity before Muslim aggression might subside. Karon seems to be more realistic in this case. But this might also mean the death of Israel as we know it.

I must now dispute Karon’s challenge of the ethical conduct of Israeli Jews. He must refer to the protective restrictions imposed on Arabs in the “disputed territories,” captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, following the continuous Arab bloody terror that targeted the Jewish civilian population.  The declared aims of this terror, explicitly stated in the Charters of the PLO and Hamas, is to dislodge the Jews from their homeland.  That aggressive policy is based on the Islamic conquest of the land of Israel in the 7^th Century and the Islamic religious premise that once a territory is conquered by Muslims it becomes Islamic land for perpetuity.  However, this Islamic premise does not obligate Jews who are the original owner of the land. Jews are not bound by Islamic religious premises. It is hard to understand why active resistance to murderous assault should be considered unethical. 

What would Tony Karon have done had he lived in a country where Muslim Arabs were incited by their clergy to mercilessly massacre innocent helpless Jews, as they did in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1935 to 1939 and then from 1949 up to date. In pacifist India people hunt down and kill blood-thirsty killer tigers; why should Arab terrorists who target defenseless women and children be treated differently? Could any ethical consideration justify giving up vigilance, risking exposure of one’s loved ones to merciless fanatic, religion-driven murderers?  Would it not be unethical to allow murders of Jewish babies (officially declared by Muslim terrorist organizations to be legitimate targets of Islamic terrorism) to take place unhindered or unpunished? 

Tony Karon is a non-believer, so he cannot tell us that he expects God to protect him from harm while trying not to inconvenience potential killers. I wonder how he would exercise pacifist ethics if misojudaic hoodlums broke into his home in New York City.

Karon cites Hillel’s Golden Rule: “That which is hateful unto yourself, do not do unto others” (which he does not apply Muslims) but forgets another famous Jewish saying: “Do not judge your friend until you are in his place”. 

Jewish ethics value human life whereas Islamic ethics glorify death, especially if it leads to killing of infidels. Jews will therefore compromise and even surrender to avoid death. It boil down to the sanctity of life versus the sanctity of death.  Muslims consider this Jewish ethical premise a weakness to be exploited in their attempt to dislodge the Jews from their homeland. This is what motivates Islamic terrorism. Yet Karon criticizes Israelis for unethical conduct in their existential struggle, while closing his eyes to the barbaric ethics of their murderous adversaries. Again, hatred of Jews surpasses fairness.

Finally, I must challenge Karon’s notion that Jewish intellect can flourish only in a Diaspora. The scientific and technological achievements of Israeli Jews in less than 60 years, which have exceeded by far those of any other country of its size, using any objective criteria, demonstrate the superiority of intrinsic creativity embedded in Jewish culture (not in Jewish biological ethnicity!!!).  Jewish creativity has been interwoven with Zionism which, to the chagrin of Tony Karon, is going to survive as long as Judaism does.

I will not attempt to psychoanalyze Karon’s anti-Zionist motivation, which probably has been formulated by his South African experience. In spite of his articulate writing style and political savvy he has failed to realize the intrinsic difference between the materialism-driven immigration of his parents or grandparents from Eastern Europe to colonial South Africa, and the ideology-motivated immigration of his Jewish uncles and aunts to the ancient Jewish homeland (See “We are not Colonialists” in my book). This is the personal tragedy of this Jew-hating Jew. However, it is easier for me to understand the motivation of Tony Karon than that of the Israeli Avraham Burg  (see my “An open letter to MK Avraham Burg” in my book), who was lengthily cited by Karon.  Burg is typical of misojudaic Israelis whose animosity to Zionism surpasses their apprehension of the mortal dangers of Islamism. 

How Jewish is Israel?

    By Tony Karon

Ha’aretz 05-19-06

If we concede A.B. Yehoshua's claim that Israel is the source of Jewish identity in today's world, we reduce Jewish identity to a conversation between anti-Semitism and a blood-and-soil nationalism that is Jewish only in the sense that anti-Semites use the term i.e., racial. But if, instead, we define "Jewish" on the basis of the universal ethical challenges at the core of Judaism, then not only is the Diaspora an essential condition of Jewishness, but Israel's own claim to a Jewish identity is open to question.

The idea that the modern State of Israel expresses some ageless desire among Jews across the Diaspora to live in a Jewish nation state is wishful thinking. Before the Holocaust, Zionism had been a minority tendency among Western Jews, and scarcely existed among those living in the Muslim world. And a half century after Israel's emergence, most of us choose freely to live, as Jews have for centuries, among the nations. That choice is becoming increasingly popular among Israeli Jews, too: 750,000 at last count - hardly surprising in an age of accelerated globalization that feeds dozens of diasporas and scorns national boundaries.

The State of Israel was created by an act of international law in 1948, largely in response to the Holocaust. It was violently rejected by an Arab world that saw it as a new Western conquest of the territory over which so much blood had been spilled to defend Muslim sovereignty during the Crusades, so like most nation states Israel had to fight its way into existence. Its victory came at the expense of another people, whose dispossession was the precondition for Israel achieving an ethnic Jewish majority. And the conflict fueled by the unresolved trauma of its birth has condemned the Jewish state to behave in ways that mock the progressive Zionist dream of Israel fulfilling the biblical injunction to Jews to be a "light unto the nations."

Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg puts it eloquently: "The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed. It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know."

So, while Yehoshua challenges the Jewish identity of the Diaspora, Burg challenges the Jewish identity of Israel. Of course, they use different definitions of "Jewish." Yehoshua dismisses religion, and says it is the land and language of Israel that defines him. I am not religious, but I share Burg's belief that Judaism is fundamentally an ethical challenge epitomized for me by the famous "on-one-leg" definition by Hillel: "That which is hateful unto yourself, do not do unto others; all the rest is commentary."

The fact that in Israel, Hebrew was transformed from a liturgical language to eclipse the Yiddish, Ladino and Arabic in which Jews had communicated for hundreds of years is a remarkable feat of nationalist social engineering, but nothing more. The notion of identity deriving from the soil seems to owe more to 19th-century European nationalism than to Jewish ethics. I can't see anything Jewish about investing hills and piles of stones with a spiritual significance worth dying and killing for.

Growing up in apartheid South Africa was an object lesson in Jewish ethics. Yes, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the colonial white society, but the mantle of victimhood belonged to others. And if you responded to the very Jewish (although in no way exclusively so) impulse to seek justice, you found yourself working side by side not only with the remarkable number of Jews who filled leadership roles in the liberation movement, but also with Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others, each articulating their own traditions within a common identity based on the common values.

Judaism's universal ethical calling can't really be answered if we live only among ourselves - and Israel's own experience suggests it's hard to live only among ourselves without doing injustice to others. As physical threats to Jewish existence in the Diaspora have receded, Zionists today cite the specter of "assimilation." But assimilation holds no fear for the happy Diaspora-ist who expresses his traditions as just that - traditions - alongside those of others.

The idea that Jews should live in a ghetto is one from which Jews were, mercifully, liberated variously between the 18th and the 20th centuries. A.B. Yehoshua and others want to revive something we're better off without. All of the great Jewish intellectual, philosophical, moral and cultural contributions to humanity I can think of were products not of Jews living apart, but of our dispersal among the cultures of the world . Maimonides or Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Einstein or Derrida; Kafka, Proust or Primo Levi; Serge Gainsbourg or Daniel Barenboim; Lenny Bruce or Bob Dylan - I could go on ad nauseum - all are products of our interaction with diverse influences in the Diaspora.

Jewish identity is always in flux and contested. The Zionist moment is a comparatively brief one in the sweep of Jewish history, and I'd argue that Judaism's survival depends instead on its ability to offer a sustaining moral and ethical anchor in a world where the concepts of nation and nationality are in decline. Israel's relevance to Judaism's survival depends first and foremost on its ability, as Burg points out, to deliver justice, not only to its citizens, but to those it has displaced. Until then, Israel's own Jewish identity also remains uncertain.

Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME.com. For more of his views, see his blog, "Rootless Cosmopolitan." (tonykaron.com <http://www.tonykaron.com>).