“The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy
and neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick,
indignantly deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for
they thereby lead them to search for false solutions, or at most
palliatives.” (Ben Frommer, The Significance of a Jewish State, Jewish
Call, Shanghai, May 1935, p.10. As cited by Lenni Brenner 2)
“The
enterprising spirit of the Jew is irrepressible. He refuses to remain a
proletarian. He will grab at the first opportunity to advance to a
higher rung in the social ladder.” (The Economic Development of the
Jewish People, Ber Borochov, 1916 3)
“The emancipated Jew is
insecure in his relations with his fellow-beings, timid with strangers,
suspicious even toward the secret feeling of his friends. His best
powers are exhausted in the suppression, or at least in the difficult
concealment of his own real character. For he fears that this character
might be recognized as Jewish, and he has never the satisfaction of
showing himself as he is in all his thoughts and sentiments. He becomes
an inner cripple, and externally unreal, and thereby always ridiculous
and hateful to all higher feeling men, as is everything that is unreal.
All the better Jews in Western Europe groan under this, or seek for
alleviation. They no longer possess the belief which gives the patience
necessary to bear sufferings, because it sees in them the will of a
punishing but not loving God. Max Nordau (Address at the First Zionist
Congress, Max Nordau, 1897 4)
In an article published just
after the first Zionist Congress (1897) Ahad Ha'Am, probably the
prominent polemist at the time, wrote “…the Congress meant this: that
in order to escape from all these troubles (the Jewish anti-social
symptoms as described by Nordau) it is necessary to establish a Jewish
State.”5
Being inspired by 19th century ideologies such as
Nationalism, Marxism, Early Romanticism, Darwinism and Life Philosophy
(Leben Philosophie), early Zionists preached for the emerging of the
bond between the Jew and his soil. Naively, they believed that the love
of farming, agriculture and nature would turn the Emancipated Jew into
an ordinary human being. Early Zionists predicted that Zionism would
create a new authentic form of Jewishness in which Jews would be
entitled to love themselves for who they are rather than who they claim
to be. While the socialists amongst them were talking about a new
commitment to working class ideology (Berl Kazanelson, Borochov, A.D.
Gordon), those on the right wing (Jabotinsky, Frommer) dreamed of a
master race that would emerge and rule the land.
Both right
and left truly believed that due to their homecoming, Jews would be
able to replace their traditional traits centred on chosenness with
aspirations towards sameness. They genuinely believed that Zionism
would turn Jews into ‘people like all people’.
As much as
early Zionists had never tried to disguise the extent of their
prophetic dream, they didn’t make any efforts to conceal their contempt
towards their brothers either. In their emerging fantasy of national
awakening, Jews were to divorce from their greed and money seeking as
well as their cosmopolitan tendencies. In their vision, Zion was there
to transform the Jew into an ordinary organic human being. The move to
Zion was there to fill the chasm created by emancipation. The
settlement in Zion was there to give birth to a new man. A Jew who
looks at himself with pride, a Jew who fills Jewishness with meaning. A
Jew that is defined by positive qualities rather than by mere negation.
The Dialectic of Negation
As
much as things can be defined by what they are, things are just as well
defined by what they aren’t. As much as something is defined by
positive qualities for being X, Y and Z, it can also be defined by not
being V, R and N. As much as my ‘cousin’ can be understood as the child
of my uncle or aunt, it can as well be defined by an endless list of
things this person fails to be. For instance he or she isn’t my sister,
my brother, my grandmother, a potato, an airplane etc. Similarly, as
much as a German subject may be defined by being a German national, who
may speak the German language and eats Wurst for lunch, the same German
subject can be easily defined by the endless list of qualities and
characteristics he lacks or fails to be. He isn’t French or English, he
doesn’t speak Spanish or Farsi, he doesn’t eat humus for lunch, he is
not a potato and he is far from being a red brick house.
When
it comes to Jews, things are getting complicated. While observant Jews
can easily list more than a few positive qualities they identify with,
they for instance follow Judaism, they practice Jewish laws, they
follow the Talmud, they follow Kosher dietary restrictions, etc.,
emancipated secular Jews have very little to offer in terms of positive
characteristics to identify with. Once you ask a secular Jew what makes
him into a Jew you may hear the following: “I am not a Christian nor am
I a Muslim.” OK then, but what is it that makes you into a Jew in
particular? You see, he may say, “I am not exactly an American, French
or British. I am somehow different.” In fact, emancipated Jews would
find it hard to list any positive quality that may identify them as
Jews. As it seems, emancipated Jews are identified by negation. They
are made of the very many things they are not.
This is
exactly where Zionism interfered. It was there to set the Jews in a
project that aimed towards an authentic identification. Zionism was
there to let the Jew reflect upon himself in terms of positive
qualities. Within the Zionist phantasmic reality, the generations of
home-comers were there to declare: ‘We are the new Jews, we are
Israelis, we are human beings like all other human beings, we live on
our land, the land of our fathers. We speak Hebrew, the language of our
forefathers, we eat the fruit and vegetables that we, ourselves farmed
on our soil.”
Evidently, Zionism has failed completely due
to various reasons. Though the Israelis speak Hebrew and dwell on a
land they associate with their collective past, the ‘new Jew’ failed in
transforming himself into an authentic humanist. Israel is an urban
capitalistic society that maintains its existence at the expense of
others. The bond to soil and nature didn’t last long. If this is not
enough, Israelis didn’t really manage to divorce the dialectic of
negation. Israel has never become a state of its citizens. It is still
a racist state that employs racially orientated immigration laws.
In
fact, Zionism could never have prevailed. It has been entangled with
colonial sins from day one. Yet, as much as Zionism has quickly
established itself as a criminal practice, some of its criticism of the
emancipated Diaspora Jewish identity is worth looking into. At the end
of the day, the so-called emancipated Diaspora Jew is still defined by
negation and this fact alone has very many grave implications.
The Politics of Negation
‘Dialectic
of negation’ is there to throw light over the murderous reality that
has been set by the Wolfowitzes, the Perles and other emancipated
warmongers such as the AJC (American Jewish Committee) that is
currently lobbying for a war against Iran. It is not really surprising
that both in America and in Britain it was mainly Zionists lobbies that
were lobbying enthusiastically for a war in Iraq. In the name of
‘Democracy’, Coca-Cola and ‘Human Rights’ Israeli lobbies were and
still are promoting the whipping of country after country.
As
far as the newly emerging Neocon ideology is concerned, we are
apparently moving from a discourse of ‘promised land’ into politics of
‘promised planet’.
But is it only the Neocons that are here
to take the blame? At the end of the day, the Neocons are not that far
off from their Bundist parents.
I suggest that we slow down
and to ask ourselves what Jewish Diaspora identity means in the 21st
century. We better try to find out whether the notion of emancipated
Jewish identity has changed at all since the early Zionists exposed its
problematic character more than a century ago. We better ask how for
instance does a ‘Jewish Marxist’ refer to his Jewishness after all?
During my years in Europe I have come across groups of people who call
themselves ‘Jews for Peace’, ‘Jews for Justice in Palestine’, ‘Jews for
this’ and ‘Jews for that’. I have recently heard about ‘Jews for
Boycott of Israeli Goods’. Occasionally I end up asking myself what
stands at the core of this racially orientated separatist peace-loving
endeavour. I may as well admit that though I have come across many
German peace activists, I have never come across an Aryan Palestinian
Solidarity group or even Caucasian Anti-War campaigners. It is somehow
Jews and only Jews who engage in racially orientated peace campaigning.
As
frightening as it may sound, Borochov and Nordau had provided us with
the answer. In the seeking of a ‘political identity’, the emancipated
Jew ends up succumbing himself to the dialectic of negation. His
political identity is defined by what he isn’t rather than by who he
is. United as a group, they aren’t Germans, they aren’t British, they
aren’t Aryans, they aren’t Muslims, they aren’t just ordinary
proletariats, they aren’t just common working class people. They are
Jews because they aren’t anything else. At a first glance it seems as
if nothing is wrong in being defined by negation. Yet, a deeper
critical glance into the notion of negation may reveal some of the
devastating aspects of this form of emancipated dialectic.
Ethical
thinking may be the first victim of the dialectic of negation. In order
to think ethically, genuine, authentic, organic thinking is of the
essence. According to Kant’s categorical imperative, an ethical being
acts ‘only according to that maxim by which he can at the same time
will that it would become a universal law’. In other words, Kant
identifies ethical thinking with a positive, authentic, genuine
orientation that sets one at a self-search for universal insight.
Clearly, such a process involves thorough self-reflection. Negation, on
the other hand, requires the opposite, it involves scouting and
searching into others’ praxis. Again, rather than understanding who you
are, you are engaging in differentiating yourself from the other.
Rather than looking into oneself, the negating subject sets his
relationships with his surrounding environment based on pragmatic and
practical decision-making. At most, he may present a pretence of
ethical thinking but not more than that.
Early Zionists were
critical enough to expose the non-ethical characteristics amongst their
fellow brothers. Zionism was there to erect a new ethical Jew, a
genuine moral being. Yet, the premise was flawed from the very
beginning. Zionists wanted to make Jews ‘people like other people’. To
a certain extent they wanted Jews to convey the pretence of being
people like other people. The failure of the Zionist dream made it
clear that even the new Jew, the Zionist, cannot engage in authentic
ethical thinking. At most, they look ethical instead of becoming
ethically orientated.
As frightening as it may sound,
looking at Israeli Hasbara as well as at Ziocon politics around the
world and especially in America and the UK, it reveals the bitter truth
of the matter. Ziocons and Hasbara always presents an ‘ethical like’
argument. They would employ what seems as a moral excuse in order to
introduce destruction and carnage. As we know the ‘only democracy in
the Middle East’ is also the one that has been starving millions of
Palestinians in concentration camps for decades. Similarly, the
Wolfowitzes and Perles dragged America and Britain into a futile
criminal war in Iraq in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and
‘liberalism’. Clearly the Palestinians and the Iraqis are victims of
the politics of negation. But they are not alone. The Western subject
who is stained with the crime of genocide is as well a victim of the
Western shift towards politics of negation. Rather than defining
ourselves by who we are, we get accustomed to our politicians defining
us for how we hate (or whom is it we suppose to hate: red, ‘axis of
evil’, Islamofascists, etc.).
More frightening is the fact
that people who succumb to the dialectic of negation cannot engage in
peace-making and reconciliation. The reason is simple; the notion of
peace may entail a collapse of the mechanism of negation. From the
point of view of negation, reconciliation means elimination. Loving
your neighbour may lead towards an identity loss. As early Zionists
observed, the condition of emancipation set the Western Jew into a
complicated identity crisis. Making peace with humanity would mean the
loss of the Jewish identity. Needless to say that in the last centuries
millions of European and American Jews have chosen peace and
assimilation. They have divorced their Jewish identity and disappeared
into the crowed. Yet, those who maintain negation as a means of
identifying are those who inherently and categorically oppose the
notion of peace. Painfully enough, more than often they do just that in
the name of peace.
Most interestingly is the fact that
emancipated Jewish identity is defined by negation may help us to
realise why is it that emancipated Jews are so often settling
comfortably in political campaigns and revolutionary movements: They
are always against something. It will be the bourgeoisie, capital,
colonialism, Islam, human rights abuse, historic revisionism, Zionism
and so forth. Seemingly, the journey between ‘dialectic of negation’
and ‘politics of hate’ is rather short.
Negation and the Palestinian Solidarity Discourse
To
be an emancipated Jew is to be defined by negation. And it is this fact
alone that may explain why it is that the Palestinian solidarity
intellectual discourse is saturated with emancipated Jewish
contributors. More than a few Jews indeed oppose the Zionist crime.
Yet, due to their emancipated secularist enthusiasm, sometimes it looks
as if the Palestinian discourse has been transformed into a Jewish
internal debate.
The reason is simple, negation of Zionism
is a good enough reason to set a powerful Jewish political identity.
Though this may explain why Jews are so involved in Palestinian
solidarity, it may additionally explain why the Palestinian solidarity
movement has never made it into a global mass movement. Apparently, not
many people around are that keen to join a liberal synagogue. As it
seems, though the battle against Zionism suits some righteous Jews for
their personal and political needs, the Palestinian people were the
last to benefit from the Jewish moral awakening.
However, I
am the last person to argue that Jews should have no say in the
Palestinian solidarity movement. As things stand, righteous Jews around
the world are highly motivated to help Palestine. Considering the scale
of the crimes committed by the Jewish state this may as well make some
sense. Yet, emancipated Jews should be aware of their role in the
movement. Emancipated Jews should learn to differentiate between their
own self-centred political interests and the Palestinian cause that is
becoming a very dynamic notion saturated with complexity. I truly
believe that Jews would contribute much just by letting the solidarity
movement take off and leave the Ghetto.
Saying just that, an old Jewish joke comes to mind:
Writings 
Ideological and political thinkers often start out with the task of defining their subjects. It should be assumed that they have come to their conclusions through intellectual processes of deduction and categorical research. Here are some (devastating) quotes that expose what early Zionist ideologists had to say about their brothers, those for whom they were developing a nationalist project based on a philosophy of racial ethnic identity:
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