Overcoming Zionism

Joel Kovel

Description

Israel is an incorrigible human rights offender because, by discriminating against Arabs, it is guilty of 'state-sponsored racism' argues Joel Kovel. Like apartheid South Africa, the best hope for peace in Israel is to return to the idea of a one-state solution, where Jews and Palestinians can co-exist in a secular democracy.



Kovel is well-known writer on the Middle East conflict. This book draws on his detailed knowledge to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. He offers a thoughtful account of the emotional and psychological aspects of Zionism that helps us understand the relationship between ideology, culture and political processes.



Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, wherein lie the roots of continued conflict.
Prologue

Part One COMING TO ZION

1. A People Apart

2. The Unnatural History of a Bad Idea

3. The Spectre of Shoah

Part Two THE JEWISH STATE

4. The Only Democracy in the Middle East

5. Facts on the Ground

6. Partners in Zion

7. Bad Conscience and State Racism

8. Slouching Toward Jerusalem

Part Three ZIONISM OVERCOME

9. Beyond the Two-State Solution

10. Palesrael: A Secular and Universal Democracy for Israel/Palestine

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Political Science
• Peace
• Middle East

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783715930
• Langue: English

Extrait

Overcoming Zionism
 
 
Overcoming Zionism
Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine
Joel Kovel
 
 
First published 2007 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
and
First published in Canada in 2007 by Between the Lines
720 Bathurst Street, Suite #404
Toronto, Ontario        M5S 2R4
1-800-718-7201
www.btlbooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Joel Kovel 2007
The right of Joel Kovel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13    978 0 7453 2570 5 Hardback
ISBN-13    978 0 7453 2569 9 Paperback
ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1593 0 ePub
ISBN-13    978 1 7837 1594 7 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Kovel, Joel, 1936–
Overcoming Zionism : toward a single democratic state in Israel/Palestine/Joel Kovel.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–897071–26–7
1. Arab–Israeli conflict––Peace. 2. Zionism––Israel. 3. Racism––Israel. I. Title.
DS128.2.K68 2007       956.9405'4       C2006–906610–8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70% post consumer waste.
10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England
 
 
 
If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is trackless and unexplored.
Heraclitus [fr 18]
Go on, builders in hope: tho Jerusalem wanders far away, Without the gate of Los: among the dark Satanic wheels.
William Blake, Jerusalem , Plate 12: 42–43
 
Contents Acknowledgements Prologue PART ONE   COMING TO ZION    1 A People Apart   How is Zion to be understood?   A vexing question    2 The Unnatural History of a Bad Idea   A tragic dilemma leads to a bad decision   The herding of Jewishness   The Arlosoroff case    3 The Spectre of Shoah PART TWO   THE JEWISH STATE    4 The Only Democracy in the Middle East   Constitutional blues    5 Facts on the Ground   On the political economy of Israel   Making the desert desolate    6 Partners in Zion   The story of Rachel Corrie   The apparatus    7 Bad Conscience and State Racism   State racism    8 Slouching Toward Jerusalem   We’re like Judaea, man   “Exterminate the Brutes!” PART THREE   ZIONISM OVERCOME    9 Beyond the Two-State Solution   Theses on anti-Zionism   Two-State, or new state? 10 Palesrael: A Secular and Universal Democracy for Israel/Palestine   The story of Ahmad   On overcoming   The practices of One-State Notes Bibliography Index
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To my Aunt Betty, who illuminated my childhood
And to Rachel Corrie, may her name live in glory
 
Acknowledgements
I became inspired to begin confronting Zionism by DeeDee Halleck, whose life I have shared for the past 29 years. Soon after, I met Stanley Diamond, who became my friend and mentor for the last eleven years of his life, and provided for me the first rigorous models of extending the confrontation into the realm of scholarship. After I finally set out to do this study, the pace and scale of those who have guided, encouraged or helped me in other ways has grown exponentially, well past the point where I am able to recall all who have contributed to this effort. In some way, the greatest thanks goes to those who, over the last three and a half years, have told me on innumerable occasions how much it meant to them that somebody was finally taking on the stifling consensus about Israel. What I say in these pages, then, is said on behalf of a great number of fellow spirits, and I can only hope that the result is adequate to their trust.
Thanks to an invitation by Michael Lerner, I began this project writing articles and essays for Tikkun magazine. It was gracious of him to do so, inasmuch as we have disagreements, which inevitably found their way into print. The decision to go further, into the writing of this book, came out of that experience but was also sparked by Edward Said’s encouragement. If this work is capable of honoring his luminous memory, it will have been worth the effort. As I went on, the pace of support accelerated. Those who have provided particular assistance have included Seth Farber, Virginia Tilley, Michael Smith, Eldad Benary, Joel Beinen, Jeff Blankfort, Elsa First, Tony Karon, Andrew Nash, David Finkel (of Against the Current ), BH Yael, Bertell Ollman, Peter Linebaugh, Bob Stone, Betsy Bowman, Maggie Cammer, Samir Amin, David Miller and Shannon Walsh. My trip to Israel/Palestine depended integrally on the friendship and assistance of Ingrid Gassner, Scott Leckie, Fionn Skiontis, Eitan Bronstein, Lessi and Hannah Domhe, Yehudith Harel, Ilan Pappe and Michel Warschawski. Others who have given of themselves include Brian Drolet, Kurt Berggren, Grace Paley, Bob Nichols, Steve Kowit, Gretchen Zdorkowski, Rachel Kushner, Katherine Menninger, Victor Wallis, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Mark Pavlick, Jim O’Connor, Naomi Schneider, Bruria and David Finkel, Karen Charman, Molly Kovel, Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai, Salim Vally, Michael Smith, Kate Crockford, Gail Miller and Jenny Romaine.
I am particularly grateful to David Castle of Pluto Press for his support and editorial judgment, and to Elaine Ross and Ray Addicott for help with preparation of the manuscript.
 
Prologue

What do you want with this particular suffering of the Jews? The poor victims on the rubber plantations in Putumayo, the Negroes in Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play a game of catch, are just as near to me. Do you remember the words written on the work of the Great General Staff about Trotha’s campaign in the Kalihari Desert? “And the death-rattles, the mad cries of those dying of thirst, faded away into the sublime silence of eternity”
Oh, this “sublime silence of eternity” in which so many screams have faded away unheard. It rings within me so strongly that I have no special corner of my heart reserved for the ghetto: I am at home wherever in the world there are clouds, birds and human tears.…
Rosa Luxemburg, Letter From Prison, February 16, 1917 1
W HAT KIND OF JEW would write such a book as Overcoming Zionism , with its very harsh view of the State of Israel and equivalently radical recommendations for change—or what comes to the same thing, identifies with Rosa Luxemburg in her attitude about suffering and the ghetto? Not a good Jew, for sure. I ceased being that 60 years ago, with the first feeling that there was something confining about the ancestral religion. But not an uncaring one either. I wrote this book in fury about Israel and the unholy complicity of the United States and its Jewish community that grants it impunity. However, the “Jewish community” is no abstraction to me. It is the community from which I sprang, it inhabits me even if I do not inhabit it; it includes my family, and no degree of estrangement suffices to nullify the deep web of memory and conflict that links me to Jewry and shapes, however negatively, the foundations of who I am.
While reading Seymour Hersh’s largely forgotten book about the development of Israel’s nuclear bomb I was struck by an off-handed sentence that the “CIA had even been tipped off about the fact that Israel was raising large sums of money for Dimona from the American Jewish community.” 2 This was by no means the most sensational of the startling revelations of Hersh’s book. But not everybody who has read The Samson Option had a mother who bought Israel Bonds in his name and the name of his children. I had at the time winced and squirmed at receiving this “gift” (the German meaning—poison—aptly describes how I felt), and liquidated the holding as soon as I could—surreptitiously, it might be added, in order not to cause further deterioration in a relationship already strained to breaking point by conflict over Zionism. But there was little consolation in this. And learning many years later that my name could have been on funds that went into this monstrous venture only adds to the stew of emotion behind the present work.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal, long helplessly accepted by the world, represents more than a strategic prize of incalculable menace. It also stands as perhaps the single greatest barrier to checking nuclear proliferation throughout the atomic era. Every American president from Eisenhower on (excluding George W. Bush, who wants Israel to have all weapons) has tried to check Israeli nuclear ambition, only to be driven back by Zionist political/financial muscle and manipulation of Holocaust guilt. Everybody in power knew this but was not to speak of it, and so the United States’ effort to rein in the spread of weapons of supreme death, however compromised to begin with, became permanently crippled.
So it was not simply “making the desert bloom” with the trees my mother had planted in my name; our family could well have materially supported nuclear proliferation. I can say with reasonable confidence that mother would have thought this was right, for she had imbibed the full glass of Zionist absolutism. She would have agreed with the preponderant sentiment, that given the persecution suffered by Jews and its awful crescendo in the Holocaust, all measures, the Bomb included, had to be taken to stave