PROPHETS
OUTCAST
PROPHETS OUTCAST:A CENTURY OF DISSIDENT JEWISH WRITING ABOUT ZIONISM AND ISRAEL. Adam Shatz, ed. New York: Nation Press, 2004. 408 pages.
In his title, Adam Shatz has chosen to remind his readers
of the
ancient prophetic tradition in Judaism. The Israelite prophets were
not men who had particular gifts for foretelling the future. They
were called by God, or by some spirit within them, to perform a
difficult, unrewarding, and unpopular task: to denounce corruption,
idolatry, and evil, to take up the cause of the poor and
disadvantaged, and either to unseat or reform the back-sliding kings
of Israel. The prophets came from the people rather than from the
ranks of the aristocracy, the affluent, or the priestly class. They
were often uncouth, untactful, and unforgiving, but gifted with
courage, analytical skills, honesty, and eloquence.
In an era when wealthy men and women appoint themselves to lead
Diaspora Jewry, when a creeping corruption spreads through Israeli
society, when an idolatrous worship of the land of Israel twists the
Zionist dream, when hundreds die and millions suffer, and when masses
of Jews shut their eyes to the wrongs being inflicted on the
Palestinians-now, more than ever before-we need our modern prophets.
Mr. Shatz, the literary editor of The Nation, has performed a
valuable service by collecting the work of 25 able, well-known men
and women starting from 1891 to the present day. They spring from a
variety of countries, but mainly Israel, the United States, Russia,
Poland, England, and France, and they represent a variety of
professions, but mainly academics, journalists, and political
scientists. Many of them were directly and intimately involved with
the establishment of the State of Israel and its subsequent
development. Interestingly, no rabbis and no soldiers are
represented. While I can think of several more people from among the
"New Historians", sociologists, and journalists, whose work
has been
challenging accepted truths for close to 25 years, and who could have
been included in Shatz's collection, it is more difficult to name
rabbis from the current Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements
who might qualify. Yet there must surely be some eloquent voices in
the Rabbis for Human Rights movement, and certainly Michael Lerner,
from the Tikkun movement, has had insightful things to say on the
subject. Also, as Yakov Rabkin has recently shown in his Au nom de la
Torah (Quebec: Laval, 2004), significant criticisms of Zionism and
Israel have emanated from the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi movement and,
in the past, from among Reform rabbis. One or two of these thinkers
could have been included in order to show the significant danger
posed by Zionism to Judaism. As for soldiers, Yehosaphat Harkabi,
Matti Peled, and Meir Pail have written authoritatively and
convincingly to show that security considerations would be better
served by negotiating with the Palestinians.
The principal virtue of the book is that it brings together a
sufficiently large number of writers to constitute a serious
criticism of various aspects of Zionism: mistreatment of the
Palestinians and the Arab minority in Israel, discrimination against
the Arab Jews, the falsification of Israeli history, the abandonment
of socialism, and the ways in which anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
have been manipulated to disarm criticism of Israel. I could wish
for one or two essays which deal more specifically with the effect of
Israeli policies on Diaspora Jewry, but it is possible that good
essays on this topic have not yet become available.
We have, then, what amounts to a thoroughgoing criticism of Zionism
and Israel excerpted from books and journals that are not easily
accessible to a public eager for more information on the subject. In
Canada, the English-language newspapers are largely subservient to
the Jewish leadership and its allies, and only a very few journals
dare to publish articles by the dissenters. It is therefore
difficult for both the Jewish and gentile public to find critical
material in the public media, though the internet does allow
persistent people to access the other narrative. With the publication
of Prophets Outcast it will no longer be possible for Jews to say,
as so many Germans once said, "We didn't know. We weren't told. We
trusted our leaders. We just supported the war effort."
It is not feasible in a short piece to review all the articles or
extracts in the book. Readers may be interested in reading the
letters or brief comments of such famous people as Einstein, Freud,
and Yehudi Menuhin, but these are more in the nature of protests or
warnings than serious critiques. I note too that Shatz has included
brief analyses of Zionism by Leon Trotsky and Abraham Leon. These are
of some historical interest, but their Marxist approach seemed to
prevent them from focusing on the main issues. There was at one time
a Marxist element in Labour Zionism, but it by no means shaped the
ideology of the mainstream and was eventually abandoned by the Labour
Zionists themselves.
The other writers are certainly worth reading, but I would
particularly like to recommend several outstanding accounts. The
first of these is Ahad Ha'am's 1891 essay, "Truth from Eretz Israel,"
which was an attempt to warn his fellow Zionists that the land was
inhabited by Arabs and that the "despotic" actions of the early
Zionists were creating anger and resentment. Even more telling is
Yitzhak Epstein's detailed analysis of how Zionist land purchases and
behaviour were affecting the fellahin, as presented in a speech he
made in Basel in 1905. Epstein, a settler in Upper Galilee,
admonished his fellow Zionists that "a short-sighted and small-minded
nationalism" was blinding Zionists to the nature of the people around
them. Unfortunately, these early warnings were ignored.
The philosopher Martin Buber, writing during the 1948 Arab-Israeli
War, distinguished between false Zionism ("normalization," which
he
saw as "a collective selfishness" and "a crude form of
nationalism")
and true Zionism (a rebirth of the spirit, whose task would be to
maintain truth and justice in order to become "an example and a light
to humanity"). He was an advocate of the bi-national state, as was
Hannah Arendt, writing just two years later. She predicted that the
Zionist state would "soon find itself in the unenviable position
of
being forced to create emergencies, that is, forced into a policy of
aggressiveness and expansion," and that the extremists would
"propagate an artificial prolongation of the war which, according
to
them, never should have ended before the whole of Palestine and
Transjordan are conquered."
Simha Flapan was one of the first Israeli insiders to challenge the
official historical myths propagated by the Zionist historians.
Writing in 1987, in The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, he
identified seven such myths, which he was able to demolish in the
light of the research he conducted into Israel's policies during the
Arab-Israel War of 1948. He pioneered the subsequent work of the "New
Historians" and sociologists. One of these, Gabriel Piterberg,
demonstrates in a recent article that the notorious "Transfer
Committee" was operating as early as 1948. But Tom Segev, who is
not
represented in this collection, traces the origin of the plans for
"transfer" (i.e., expulsion) of the Palestinians back to the
1930s,
when the Zionist leaders became conscious that the time when they
would have the upper hand was drawing near.
I. F. Stone, Uri Avnery, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz, all three writing
after the Six-Day War of 1967, foresaw the deleterious effects that a
prolonged occupation of the Territories would have on the Israeli
character. But the most impressive comment on the period following
the 1967 war is the extract by Noam Chomsky in which he presents a
detailed, systematic analysis of the discriminatory system oppressing
Israel's Arab citizens.
I would also highly recommend Ella Shohat's description of the status
of Sephardi Jews in Israel, Marc Ellis's call for a new Jewish
theology to accompany political reform, Brian Klug's article on
rethinking Jewish identity and solidarity with Israel, and the final
article by Tony Judt, published in 2003. Judt's article outlines the
catastrophic alternatives facing Israel and calls on Diaspora Jews to
join with Americans of good will in advocating a bi-national state,
the only alternative with a chance of preventing total disaster. It
is interesting, indeed, that so many of these writers see the
bi-national state as the best possible solution. Adam Shatz's
valuable book can play an important role in encouraging an open
debate, which is long overdue.