 |
|
February 13, 2012
Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
Menachem Wecker: Business Schools Teach Real Estate Despite Troubled Housing Market
February 10, 2012
Lisa M. Krieger: Man with defibrillator demands access to his own heart's information
David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
February 9, 2012
Laura McMullen: 10 Least Expensive Public Schools for Out-of-State Students
Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
February 8, 2012
Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
February 7, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
February 6, 2012
Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
Caroline B. Glick: Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 10, 2004
/ 23 Menachem-Av, 5764
When breaking a taboo means guaranteed self-destruction
By
Bret Stephens
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
At a recent dinner party in Jerusalem, I mutely watched as a Dutch journalist engaged in an hours-long discussion — frequently bordering on a shouting match — with the sons of our host. They were military-age boys, some of them combat veterans, and brash and argumentative in the sabra (Israeli) way. The journalist was no less brash and argumentative, and there she stood in the kitchen, glass of red wine in one hand, cigarette in the other, parrying one verbal challenge after another and launching pointed challenges of her own.
It was the sort of exchange in which, plainly, she wasn't going to convince them and they weren't going to convince her. So after a while, I asked: "Don't you get tired of these arguments?"
"Yes and no," she said. "I think they're important to have."
— Why? I asked.
— Because the points I raise are things Israelis never talk about, don't want to talk about. — For instance?
— For instance, a binational state. That's taboo.
— Well, some Israelis do talk about a binational state. People like Meron Benvenisti.
— But he's a known quantity. Nobody listens to him.
— Why should anyone listen to him? What's wrong with a country having taboos? Or do you not believe in a Jewish state?
— That's not the point. The point is there ought to be more discussion about it.
— Should there be more discussion in Holland about expelling the Muslim population, whose values are so often antithetical to yours?
— I don't think the two are comparable. — The issue is not whether they're comparable. The issue is whether there are valid taboos.
And so it went. I did my best to keep an even tone, and so did she, and we parted on pleasant terms. On the whole, I was happy with the points I made, and suffered no pangs of what the French call esprit d'escalier. Later, however, I wondered whether if it wouldn't have been better to throttle her.
I mean that in jest — at least, mostly in jest. Yet a taboo is not taboo if no one is seriously willing to penalize those who violate it. In the West, people talk constantly about "breaking down the old taboos," but the ease and swiftness with which one taboo after another has collapsed suggest these things never really were taboo in the first place. Or at least they hadn't been taboo for a long time, even if it was only recently that somebody bothered to give them a shove.
Still, the West has its taboos, and these are strictly enforced both legally and socially. A few years ago, a white civil servant in the Washington DC mayor's office was sacked for using the word "niggardly," even though it bears no etymological relationship to its infamous homonym. In Canada, the law bans "statements, other than in private conversation, [that] willfully promote hatred against any identifiable group." In Germany, Holocaust-denial is a crime. In Holland, Joop Glimmerveen, a neo-Nazi, has been jailed three times for advocating the expulsion of ethnic minorities, particularly Surinamese, from the country.
These taboos are justified on several grounds: as measures against discrimination, as a fence against incitement to violence and as an affirmation of national character. Why does Germany forbid Holocaust-denial? Not because Holocaust-denial realistically threatens public order, but rather because Germany today insists on being — indeed, it defines itself as — a country that will not look away from its genocidal past. As for Holland, the laws it enforces against hate speech are there to privilege its multicultural identity over its ethnically Dutch or even politically liberal identities. That may not be a wise choice, but it's the choice Holland makes for itself, and it is hardly my place to dispute it.
Of course, the Dutch and German taboos do not quite belong in the same category. Holland's multicultural identity is a matter of choice. By contrast, Germany's Holocaust-confronting identity can be said to be the moral foundation of the Federal Republic and thus a matter of national necessity.
For Israel, the question is whether the privileged Jewish character of the state is a matter of choice or necessity. But before that can be addressed, there is a prior question: Who gets to answer it?
Ordinarily, it goes without saying that every country is entitled to answer the question for itself. This generally holds true whether the country is a democracy or not, but it always holds true when the country is a democracy. Thus the Dutch democratically choose a multicultural identity (at the expense of free speech), and the rest of the world acknowledges their sovereign and democratic right to choose it. Similarly, the French insist on a secular identity (at the expense of religious liberty), and the rest of the world respects their right to do that, too.
Israel, however, is consigned to a separate category: It chooses a Jewish identity, yet the United States is the only country I know of that both recognizes that identity as well as Israel's right to choose it as a matter of sovereign and democratic right. The rest of the world divides between those who seek to expunge Israel's Jewish identity via the so-called right of return to a so-called state of all its citizens, and those who think the question ought to be decided via negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.
In other words, Israel is the only democracy where the taboo against foreign interference on questions of national self-definition has been lifted. In itself, this is extraordinary. More extraordinary is the fact that it has been lifted for a country whose name is synonymous with its self-definition. "The United States of America" denotes a political grouping; "The Netherlands" denotes a geographical location. In both cases, the identity of the state is necessarily a matter of choice. "Israel" denotes ancestry; it is an inherited identity, not a chosen one. To recognize a State of Israel is necessarily and primarily a recognition of that state's identity, rather than of its geographical extent or its political character.
This, then, is half the answer to the question of whether Israel's identity as a Jewish state is a matter of choice or necessity. To recognize Israel is to recognizes a Jewish state; to argue, as my Dutch interlocutor did, that the Jewish character of the state ought at least to be a subject of debate is to say the state of Israel is at best a debatable proposition.
The word normally attached to such a proposition, at least if made by an Israeli, is treason: "The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance." When the idea is proposed by a person belonging to another nationality, it approaches an act of war. In the case of the Jewish state, it is something else again: Not simply an act of aggression against a democratic government, but of the national identity of which that government is the sovereign instrument. The best linguistic approximation we have of this in English is "ethnocide," because it means the extinction of identity without necessarily implying physical extinction.
It might be said that the flip-side of ethnocide is assimilation — E Pluribus Unum, the quintessentially American model of submerging particular identities into a universal identity. This is a fine model, at least when it works, which isn't all that often. It is also fine so long as it is voluntary; that is, so long as individuals are willing to exchange inherited identities for chosen ones. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis have opted for the opposite course; that is, they have chosen> to stick with their inherited identity. To propose a binational state, or to demand it, or to countenance it, is to deny Israelis not only their Jewish inheritance but also their democratic wish to live in a Jewish state.
It is fast becoming accepted wisdom in Europe that the only genuinely democratic, just and equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is either a two-state solution — A state of "Palestine" on the one side, a state for "all its citizens" on the other — or a binational state. Excluded from the list of acceptable options is a Jewish state (whatever its geographical extent), a state that functions primarily and explicitly for its Jewish citizens. This is the new taboo.
I have deliberately omitted from this essay a discussion of what a binational state would soon descend to, namely, Lebanon. Right now, I'm not interested in practical arguments or probable consequences. The Dutch journalist made an argument from principle, and those are the grounds on which I have responded. Those principles seem to be that Jews have neither a right to national identity nor to democratic choice. There's a term for this too: Anti-Semitism.
By coincidence, my encounter with the Dutch journalist fell very nearly on the 60th anniversary of Anne Frank's arrest. That's barely two generations.The fruit never does fall very far from the tree.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington
and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bret Stephens is Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
© 2004, Bret Stephens
|
