Regarding 'The Question of Zion' - Jacqueline Rose interviewed

August 25, 2005 7:51 PM

...This is one of the reasons why I am convinced that Zionism should not simply be dismissed. Hans Kohn turned away from Zionism, but Martin Buber and Ahad Ha'am definitely did not. If Zionism can produce voices such as these, this is evidence of a fermentation of rare value. Discovering thinkers like Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt and Ahad Ha'am was like encountering pieces of coral from a deep pool. I had read Arendt and indeed some of Buber's work before, but I did not anticipate the sheer prescience of their critique of Zionism. For example, Arendt predicted that the Jewish state would become utterly reliant on American force, and live 'surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population' in which all 'development would be determined exclusively by the need of war'; this is so accurate, it sends a shudder down your back. Then there was the romantic, semi-mystical discourse of Buber and Ahad Ha'am, posing the question of who we are at its most profound. Their vocabulary revolves around spirituality, selfhood, self-knowledge, truth, understanding, denial. In order to put into words the perils of Zionism, these thinkers had to explore why people can desire identities that become ultimately destructive...

from an interview with Jacqueline Rose, who wrote The Question of Zion via Open Democracy
posted by y2karl (30 comments total)

From the second link:

I don't know if she really believes that the problems of the world can be mastered; the world, unfortunately, is not governed by the authority of reason. But in a culture where people, as she says, will do anything to get attention, it doesn't seem just to criticise her for seeking attention/bringing attention to issues that concern us all. Her work on Israel/ Palestine engages her and exposes her in the major political crisis of our time, war in the Middle East. As a Jew - "I feel completely Jewish, but I hope in an open-ended way" - she passionately supports Palestinian self-determination, but argues against what she calls "the use of Zionism as a dirty word". "There is a kind of cliché position on the left where, if you support Palestine, then you can use Zionism as an insult - which I think is wrong and naive, because Zionism is one of the most powerful collective identities of modern times and if you don't understand that then you are in serious trouble." US guilt, post-second world war, towards Israel and Israeli perception of itself as victim are two of the problems she identifies as "fanning hostilities". "There is a real fear in the Jewish psyche which allows it to go seeing itself as victim. The holocaust is used to legitimise Israeli aggression, I have no doubt about that. There is a feeling that it is not safe to be a Jew in the world, and it is legitimate - Bin Laden has been unequivocal about this." This feeling, too, she says, is used to legitimise Israeli aggression, which in turn provokes anti-semitism, "and leads to Israel being unable to acknowledge the dangers of its own aggression towards Palestine". So we go round and round. Victim becomes oppressor. Oppression produces shame. Ashamed of our shame we repress it. Hide behind authority, ideology. "Ideals," she says, "are a licence to kill."
posted by y2karl at 8:05 PM on August 25, 2005

Boy Y2 when you site you really site.

Good article though!
posted by Mr Bluesky at 8:21 PM on August 25, 2005

very interesting--thanks. I don't think Zionism and treatment of Palestinians are that intertwined ideologically tho at all. Zionism predates Israel and for a long time was a pipe dream, like many floating around in that era. The continuation of Zionism is another matter of course (and has mutated into something horrible i think), but the idea is not as connected to other people or groups at all (unless you count the Germans of Herzl's time). Victim becomes oppressor is relatively recent, and less about Zionism than it is about the reality of having a state with exclusionary laws and policies and a much larger indigenous population.

I think she neglects the practical and the realpolitik on Israel's end--esp. regarding Christian fundamentalist support for Israel. I don't think it's about identifying with them at all--it's about taking support from anyone who helps ensure survival and continuation. Which is itself a problem, but not from a psychological standpoint of identifying with people who need you to exist and then die for their religious dreams to come true. Israel takes billions from us, and we also give billions to Egypt and other Arab countries--It doesn't stop Israel from taking our money, even tho we give to Israel's enemies. What's the psychological analysis on that?

If you replaced Zionism (the idea) and the treatment of Palestinians with Democracy (the idea) and Slavery in the US, would it hold up? or is that not fair?
posted by amberglow at 8:31 PM on August 25, 2005

Can't say I'm fond of nationalist sentiments. Tinge them with religious fervor and I am concerned. Slap a little racism on top and I'm pretty much against it by default.
posted by nightchrome at 8:32 PM on August 25, 2005

i guess it's the idea of psychoanalysis of an idea or ideology instead of people and their actions that bothers me, and seems off.
posted by amberglow at 8:41 PM on August 25, 2005

This was new and interesting to me:

...Herzl is also the author of a surprisingly alternative, cosmopolitan narrative in his 1902 novel, Altneuland. This portrays Jewish settlement in Palestine as a stateless form of “autonomy and self-defence” working to the benefit of Jews and Arabs alike – a belief strongly held by many of the early Zionists. At the time, the multi-faith future Herzl envisaged was far too progressive for many. The novel was much criticised for not being sufficiently Jewish. Ahad Ha’am objected to Herzl’s suggestion in the novel that the liberation of the Jews will be followed by the liberation of black Africans – with which he wanted nothing to do.

posted by y2karl at 8:46 PM on August 25, 2005

You read the entire article, amberglow ? Your comments suggest otherwise.
posted by y2karl at 8:47 PM on August 25, 2005

yup. i always read the whole thing. This especially i take issue with:
...the application of psychoanalytic terms to collective life – I believe that psychoanalysis can help us understand better how identities are formed and make and break themselves. What you learn, at the risk of sounding woolly, is simply that you must open up points of dialogue wherever you can.
Psychoanalysis also asks us to believe that the carapace breaks: that the symptom cannot hold. You hit the wall of your own defences and the symptom becomes too costly in terms of the energies of the mind. It becomes too expensive in terms of that economy.
The same questions that concern me now in relation to Zionism exercised us as feminists. You don’t have to be a harmonious political subject. You can work in different ways and at different levels, according to the needs of the time. ...

Zionism (or Apartheid, or Democracy, or Socialism, etc) is not an individual's identity and it's not the only identity any human (including Israelis) has, and it's way too reductive to see it that way. Talking about the idea and expression of Zionism as if it's a personality trait or a neurosis or a real identifying role (like "mother" or "child" or "boss", etc) when it's one of many in individuals (just as i'm a gay, Jewish American left-handed middlechild Democrat who smokes, etc) and not really as operative as most others and doesn't interact with the id, ego and superego in the same way as others is kinda ignoring that the idea itself is not the problem but the uses individuals put to that idea. Lenin's Communism wasn't Stalin's Communism wasn't Krushchev's Communism wasn't Gorbachev's Communism, etc. Does that make sense?
posted by amberglow at 9:12 PM on August 25, 2005

Further she herself speaks to that but it's not being used. This, for instance, makes the idea Zionism responsible for things in individuals that may or may not have anything to do with their actions:
But that rigidification of identity which the state justifies in terms of such a history, ensures that every catastrophe that happens to Israel becomes a confirmation of its view of itself. It leads to a fortification of the soul. This distressing overlap between the need to feel safe as a nation and the need to believe in yourself takes on the form of a repetition of trauma.

The state's guiding principles may or may not be the force underlying any actions taken by any specific Israeli leaders at one point or another. Building a wall, or clearing a settlement, or encouraging kibbutzes or immigration, or bombing Jordan, or meeting Sadat back in Carter's day, or responding in a specific way to an attack or suicide bomber, etc, all are and were the result of the leaders at the time and the facts on the ground, and not the idea of Zionism. Zionism in itself is not at all responsible for all of those specific actions, anymore that Democracy is responsible for Slavery or the decimation of the Native American populations or the rise of Labor Unions or the power of Corporations .... It seems that she's ascribing one motive to everything--both good and bad--that she had this idea first and set about fitting these political, social, and reallife problems into that idea's framework, sorta.
posted by amberglow at 9:29 PM on August 25, 2005

I didn't pay attention to the psychoanalysis part so much and don't see what your are seeing. My cherrypicking runs towards things like:

openDemocracy: You argue that Zionism is a “wonderful example” of the work of the psyche in the constitution of the modern nation-state. It imported to the middle east, you go on to say, “a central European concept of organic nationhood – one founded on ethnicity and blood – that was in the throes of decline.” Perhaps it is in crisis but not in decline – then or now – as much as we might assume?

Jacqueline Rose: The collapse of Yugoslavia taught us that this has not gone away. Theodor Herzl’s biographer, Amos Elon describes (in A Blood-Dimmed Tide) the tragic cost of Zionism’s success: “when religion is seen primarily as a quest for identity, it comes at the expense of its other higher purposes, charity and compassion”; he adds, “(in) the final analysis, as Karl Kraus warned, every ideology gravitates towards war.”...

The same questions that concern me now in relation to Zionism exercised us as feminists. You don’t have to be a harmonious political subject. You can work in different ways and at different levels, according to the needs of the time.

In the present conjuncture, I have little doubt that Sharon’s pull-out from Gaza is a subterfuge masking the consolidation of the West Bank settlements. This is becoming clearer by the day. The occupation must end. Beyond that, the question of what a Palestinian nationalism and indeed a Jewish nationalism can be remains open, and indeed must be kept open...

I think there should be economic and military sanctions against Israel, and an academic and cultural boycott as well. In face of the complete destruction of freedom of speech in Palestinian educational infrastructures, to point to the forms of creative dialogue that might take place across academe is evasive. This is a time for deciding which side you are on, and what you can do to prevent the deterioration of the situation.

True, there is a risk of boycott hardening the identity you are trying to open up. But at certain moments you must recognise that you are involved in different kinds of political calculation, and ask: what is being done to end this situation? What forces are being brought to bear? The answer is: none. That is why I feel that it is beholden on academics as a matter of conscience to do something about this, even if it creates something of a mess...

Nothing PostFreudian AiryFairy there.

Your Nitpicking May Vary.
posted by y2karl at 9:31 PM on August 25, 2005

Actually, upon rereading, I see I'm not really responding to what you wrote so much as being irritated by you. There is no escape from you. It gets tiresome. I wish you wouldn't comment so much. Would you rather speak or be heard ?

I have nothing more to add, and, in fact, wish I could delete my previous comment.
posted by y2karl at 9:44 PM on August 25, 2005

<target="y2karl">Actually, upon massively qouting again, I see I'm not really responding to what you wrote so much as quoting the articles a whole goddamn lot.&lt/target>

There's no escape from you either, it gets tiresome. I wish you wouldn't make so many front page posts. Would you rather quote or be heard ?
posted by blasdelf at 10:09 PM on August 25, 2005

Hm. The thread was going well until the bizarre insults started.

every catastrophe that happens to Israel becomes a confirmation of its view of itself

That part, at least, is pretty accurate, but I agree with amberglow: its strokes are much too broad. Israel is not monolithic.

And stuff like this --

Oppression produces shame. Ashamed of our shame we repress it. Hide behind authority, ideology. "Ideals," she says, "are a licence to kill."

That's one profoundly counterproductive bit of rhetoric. I've known a fair number of zionists (used to be one myself). They're not evil or fucked up. They're just wrong.
posted by Tlogmer at 11:54 PM on August 25, 2005

Getting angry at the idea of Zionism is just a sugar-coated way of being anti-semitic.

For those of us living here in America and other European countries, let's try not to forget things like the imperialism of the 16th and 17th centuries, or Manifest Destiny in 18th and 19th centuries.
posted by poppo at 4:44 AM on August 26, 2005

Getting angry at the idea of Zionism is just a sugar-coated way of being anti-semitic.

So is a jew who is angry at the idea of Zionism a sugar-coated anti-semite?

I don't get what you are trying to say. I'm angry at the ideology of Al-Qaeda but I'm not anti-Islam
posted by twistedonion at 5:59 AM on August 26, 2005

Actually, upon rereading, I see I'm not really responding to what you wrote so much as being irritated by you. There is no escape from you. It gets tiresome. I wish you wouldn't comment so much. Would you rather speak or be heard ?

I have nothing more to add, and, in fact, wish I could delete my previous comment.

WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
KARL?
posted by gwint at 6:03 AM on August 26, 2005

So is a jew who is angry at the idea of Zionism a sugar-coated anti-semite?

Find me a jew who wants Israelis out of Israel and we'll explore that.

I don't get what you are trying to say.

All I'm trying to say is it's completely hypocritical when someone who lives in America says "I think there should be economic and military sanctions against Israel, and an academic and cultural boycott as well."

Why? Because they now occupy land that someone else did? My point was, so do we (and by we, I mean those of us living in lands which were once not ours...Good examples: The United States, or anywhere in the Americas). It's hypocritical, that's all.

In the interest of full disclosure: I am Jewish. I am in support of Israel's pullout from Gaza.
posted by poppo at 6:28 AM on August 26, 2005

And regarding this comment: I'm angry at the ideology of Al-Qaeda but I'm not anti-Islam

This is a poor analogy, but I suspect you realize this, unless perhaps you'd like to compare those ways in which Al-Qaeda is like Israel. Then I will respond in kind with those ways in which they are different, if you still want me to.
posted by poppo at 6:41 AM on August 26, 2005

Karl,
an interesting post as always, thanks. Rose is always interesting in what she writes, even when you disagree with her. I was just thinking of her novel Albertine, since I'm rereading Proust, and how successful it was in a genre (the excavation of the minor female character) that tends toward the inane.

I disagree profoundly with amberglow. I think that Rose is on precisely the right track in trying to understand motivations and in using psychoanalysis to do so. Yes, it's easy to use a characiture of Freudian thought to talk about politics and not get very far past ludicrisness, but Rose is not simply a Freudian. She's one of the first English translators of Lacan, and has written extensively on Melanie Klein (see her book Why War?). She belongs to a long tradition that holds that collective identities are made up of individual identities, and as such, need to be understood as emotional and invested positions before one begins to consider realpolitic. The problem with reducing politics and political identity to realpolitics is that it fails to account for why people become politically invested in the first place. I mean absolutely no disrespect when I point out that both y2karl and amberglow have political investments that seem central to their identities, and that it would do both a disservice to reduce those investments to the kind of cost-benefit analysis of realpolitic.

Zionism is very interesting as a modern political movement, as a new type of nationalism, but it's hard to study and talk about as such because it's so fraught. People who identify as Zionist like poppo, who have no idea what they're talking about (Rose is a British Jew, and calling her an anti-Semite is the worst kind of Orwellian attempt at silencing), and racists on the other side who try to equate Zionism with Nazism, spoil the discussion before it can even start. But Zionism is interesting because of the milieu that it grew out of, and its early and explicit link with socialism and justice as a founding principle of the state. Many early Zionists were not interested in (then) Palestine at all as a place to found a Jewish state, which further complicates and broadens the question. I thought Rose's comment that "the post-1967 occupation and the cheap Palestinian labour it made available destroyed socialism as an inner motivating principle for building the state," was perhaps the most interesting part of the interview because it encapsulates all of the various confusing strands that made up and now make up Zionism.

Because, after all, Zionism is a kind of failure. Which is not to say that Israel is a failure, but simply that the ideals represented by Zionism, and here Rose's invocation of Buber and the inimitable Ahad Ha'am are crucial, which were about recapturing a Jewish soul of freedom, liberty and safety, and leaving behind the fear and resentiment of the integrated German Jews and the "dirty" OstJuden, have devolved (not without reason) into a need to simply survive.
posted by OmieWise at 6:50 AM on August 26, 2005

You're right, she's British, not American. My fault.
posted by poppo at 7:04 AM on August 26, 2005

This is a poor analogy, but I suspect you realize this, unless perhaps you'd like to compare those ways in which Al-Qaeda is like Israel. Then I will respond in kind with those ways in which they are different, if you still want me to.


I didn't say Al Qaeda was the same as Zionism. It's not a poor analogy at all.

Al Qaeda does not equal Islam

Zionism does not equal Judiaism

Being angry with Al Qaeda does not make a person anti-muslim

Being angry with Zionism does not make a person anti-semetic


You say, Getting angry at the idea of Zionism is just a sugar-coated way of being anti-semitic.

I'm saying how can being angry at an ideology (Zionism) equate to being anti-everyone involved in that culture (Jews). Correct me if I am wrong but not all Jews are Zionists, right?

If you want to call me anti-Zionist go right ahead. But don't think for a second that I'm in any way anti-semite. I'm not.
posted by twistedonion at 7:07 AM on August 26, 2005

"Getting angry at the idea of Zionism is just a sugar-coated way of being anti-semitic."
And Zionism is just a sugar-coated version of anti-Arab racism. See how easy it is to be reductive (and wrong) when making rhetorical points?
posted by klangklangston at 7:16 AM on August 26, 2005

You guys are right abouy my statement. It was stupid. It's also the second time in two days I have been a dick on Metafilter. Sorry.

I quit smoking this week if that buys me any points.
posted by poppo at 7:19 AM on August 26, 2005

I quit smoking this week if that buys me any points.

poppo-Keep with it, it only gets easier. Good luck.
posted by OmieWise at 7:26 AM on August 26, 2005

I quit smoking this week if that buys me any points.

It buys you a good few in my eyes poppa. I'm unbearable every single time I try to quit. I don't even bother trying anymore. Good luck!

Just try not turn into a sugar-coated anti-smoker ;-)
posted by twistedonion at 7:43 AM on August 26, 2005

sorry, poppo, not poppa
posted by twistedonion at 7:43 AM on August 26, 2005

I don't think I could be a sugar coated anything right now. I'm going over to the MSN forums to write in all caps.
posted by poppo at 7:45 AM on August 26, 2005

Poppo: Take it to MSN Filter!
(Keep trying: kicking nicotine is HARD).
posted by klangklangston at 9:09 AM on August 26, 2005

I thought Rose's comment that "the post-1967 occupation and the cheap Palestinian labour it made available destroyed socialism as an inner motivating principle for building the state," was perhaps the most interesting part of the interview because it encapsulates all of the various confusing strands that made up and now make up Zionism.

That sentence struck me as well. As did your comment--it expressed quite well what I could not say last night.

I was upset last night over things unrelated to this thread or site and it shows in my comments above. I wish I could have been as articulate and clear thinking last night as OmieWise was this morning. My apologies.
posted by y2karl at 9:13 AM on August 26, 2005

It is impressive how widely it is believed (even among Jews) that Zionism is a universally held Jewish belief. This is not the case. It is probably more widely held the less observant of a Jew that one is. Among more observant Jews, the topic becomes more complicated.

The interview has links to orthodox religious folks that oppose the State of Israel's existence, like The Jews Not Zionists website, mostly representing those outside of the mainstream.

However, it is impossible to dispute the traditionally Jewish source (Gemara in Masechta Kesuvos) of many's concern about Israel, that the Jews should not take Israel by force. Zionism clearly comes in many flavors, and many of those famous rabbis that have been against zionism are thinkers and philosophers of a stature whose opinion must at least be examined carefully.

It is interesting that the criticism often leveled by the religious community is that the founders of Israel sought to replace the religion of Judaism with secular feelings about a state like any other state. A very strong point.

Others frequently make the point that, since the creation of the State of Israel, no country has been more dangerous for Jews.
posted by Adamchik at 5:35 PM on August 26, 2005