Happy New Year to All
Viewpoint Readers
Jewish Academic Judt Defends Non-racist One State
- by Nathaniel Popper
Tony Judt is a scholar who was until recently best known for his
writings on European history. But then, in a 2,900-word essay in the
October 23 edition of The New York Review of Books, Judt dropped the
intellectual equivalent of a nuclear bomb on Zionism, calling for
the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state.
Judt argued in his essay that Israel is quickly on the way to
becoming a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno state." The
ethnic basis of Israeli laws, Judt said, was counter to the modern,
democratic ideals to which Israel holds itself. In place of a Jewish
state, he argued, should emerge a binational state with equal rights
for all Jews and Arabs currently living in Israel and the
Palestinian territories.
The response to the essay, "Israel: The Alternative," was fast and
furious, with several vehement critics seemingly ready to dismantle
Judt, the London native and director of the Remarque Institute at
New York University.
In the first weeks after his essay was published, Judt and The New
York Review received more than 1,000 letters, many peppered with
terms like "antisemite" and "self-hating Jew," and some going so far
as to threaten the scholar and his family. Judt was removed from the
masthead of The New Republic, where he had been listed as a
contributing editor, and condemned by the magazine's literary
editor, Leon Wieseltier, and other pro-Israel commentators.
In the end, the outrage in many circles appeared to boil down to one
basic question: "What kind of a Jew would write such things?"
A "proud" one, answered Judt, in a recent interview with the
Forward, insisting that despite his transformation from teenaged
Zionist activist to 50-something Zionist apostate he is still happy
to be connected to the "annoying, burdensome, proud, difficult,
unique, Jewish heritage."
Born in 1948, the same year that Israel came into existence, Judt
was raised in the heavily Jewish East End section of London by a
mother whose parents had immigrated from Russia and a Belgian father
who descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis.
Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, Judt's
mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school
and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which
the scholar says he still thinks of wistfully.
Urged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world
of Israeli politics at age 15, rising to become the national
secretary of the Labor Zionist youth movement Dror. He helped
promote the immigration of British Jews to Israel and organized
relief missions to the fledgling Jewish state.
Just after the Six Day War, Judt, then 19, dropped out of Cambridge
and went to Israel, where his excellent Hebrew allowed him to work
as a translator for international volunteers aiding the army.
While many Jews throughout the world found themselves inspired by
Israel's dramatic victory in 1967, it was during the aftermath of
the war that Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to
unravel.
"I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist,
communitarian country through work," Judt said. The problem, he
began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of
the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering
in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."
When he returned to Cambridge to finish his studies, he did not turn
against Zionism, but he did push questions regarding Israel to the
back of his mind. Over time, though, on top of his increasing
discomfort with Israeli policy toward Palestinians, the idea grew in
his head that a national homeland and haven for Jews was no longer
necessary. Judt said that he began to think that "the rule of law,
the power of Western states and international diplomacy" provided
better protection than the Jewish state.
"Even if I felt threatened as a Jew," Judt told the Forward, "I
would never want to go to Israel."
Judt went further in his essay, arguing that rather than serving as
a safe haven for Jews around the world, Israel and its policies were
responsible for a global spike in antisemitism. "The depressing
truth," Judt wrote, "is that Israel today is bad for the Jews."
This argument, perhaps more than any other, aroused the anger of
Judt's critics, including Wieseltier. "Surely Israel is not bad for
the Jews of Russia, who may need a haven; or for the Jews of
Argentina, who may need a haven; or for the Jews of Iran,"
Wieseltier wrote in his lengthy response to Judt, published in the
October 27 edition of The New Republic.
Wieseltier attributed Judt's essay to a misguided sense of
embarrassment and internalization of antisemitic attempts to blame
all Jews for Israeli policy decisions.
"I mean that Judt is embarrassed by Israel. And so Israel must be
gone," Wieseltier wrote. He added: "The behavior of the self-
described Jewish state seems to have affected the way everyone else
looks at him. I detect the scars of dinners and conferences. He does
not wish to be held accountable for things that he has not himself
done, or to be regarded as the representative of anyone but
himself."
"That is garbage," Judt responded, when asked about Wieseltier's
theory. In order to be embarrassed, Judt said, he would have had to
have precisely the kind of abstract, ethnic identification with
Israel that he believes is so antiquated. With all this venom being
exchanged, Judt told The New Republic that he would understand if
his name were dropped from the masthead. A week later it was,
without any further communication, Judt said.
Judt told the Forward that while he understood the controversial
nature of his call for a binational state, he was taken aback by the
refusal of most of his critics, especially the American ones, to
even consider the idea. European and Israeli readers and discussion
partners did not voice the same vehement objections to his proposal,
Judt said. Indeed, the only approving response published in The New
York Review came from writer Amos Elon, an Israeli expatriate now
living in Europe.
"Americans, unlike most other Jews in the world, think of Israel not
as a country, but as a guarantee," Judt said. "It made me feel a
growing responsibility to provide another way of looking at these
issues."
Judt seemed remarkably unperturbed by the deeply critical response
to his essay from American Jews, a reflection that appears to stem
in part from his rather dim opinion of the Jewish community. "It is
such an insecure community," Judt said, "so desperate to find some
basis for its own identity."
The scholar said that he does not identify with Israel or the
American Jewish community, and acknowledged that this partially
explains his lack of attachment to the Zionist state.
Still, Judt said, he considers himself a "proud Jew." He said that
he has every intention of providing his two young sons with a strong
education in Jewish history and tradition, while also instilling a
respect and understanding for the other religions in the Western
world.
Judt has mostly shied away from any Jewish communal involvement,
except for his stint as a judge for the Koret Jewish Book Awards.
With other Jewish dinner engagements probably off the table for the
foreseeable future, Judt said he plans to continue in that capacity.
"I don't see why my position on Israel should disqualify me as a
good Jew in the Jewish community or Jewish literary circles."
*****************************************************************
Nathaniel Popper wrote this article for Forward.
*****************************************************************
|