Gadi Taub: Liberalism, Democracy, and the Jewish State
[Gadi Taub is an assistant professor of communications and public policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of a number of works of fiction, as well as of The Settler and the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism (in Hebrew; Miskal-Yedioth Ahronoth Books, 2006).]
The future of the state of Israel is once again a topic of heated public debate. For good reasons: The possibility of a nuclear threat from a hostile Iran is one; deadlock in the peace process in the region, and the chance of a gradual shift into chronic civil war between Israelis and Palestinians, is another. But it has become common in some circles to ask not only whether Israel can survive, but also if it has a right to.
Some commentators believe that "the Jewish Question" that has been buzzing around in the West for some three centuries — the question of how this ancient people, the Jews, should fit into a modern political order — should be reopened. National self-determination for Jews in a state of their own, such critics say, can no longer be part of a morally acceptable answer. That is a telling development. As in the past, Western attitudes to the "Jewish Question" are reliable indications of larger political moods and of the shifting meanings of political concepts.
The first thing one senses about the framing of the topic today is hardly a surprise: the growing unease with nation-states. The horrors of Fascism and Nazism made us all wary of extreme nationalism. Until the 1970s, national-liberation movements in rapidly collapsing Western colonies still reminded the democratic world that nationalism is not always the enemy of liberty but sometimes its ally. But the decline of colonialism and the deterioration of liberation movements into third-world tyrannies, combined with the rise of the European Union and globalization, changed that. The postcolonial era gave rise to a hope of transcending nationalism, and has relegated nationalist sentiments in the West's political imagination to the parties of reaction. Current debates about Israel's future clearly reflect that trend. But they also indicate a less-obvious feature of the antinational mood: a growing rift between liberalism and democracy.
A recent wave of books on the future of Israel offers a glimpse into that tendency. The four discussed here (there are many others) are polemical rather than scholarly, and they are vastly different from one another. One is an autobiographical account, by Daniel Cil Brecher, a German Jew who immigrated to Israel and then back to Europe; another is the work of a French Jewish journalist, Sylvain Cypel, who spent more than a decade in Israel; the third is a fiery anti-Zionist exhortation, by Joel Kovel, a Jewish psychiatrist and now a professor of social studies at Bard College, who challenged Ralph Nader for the presidential nomination of the Green Party; and the last is an analysis of the challenges facing Israel, by Mitchell G. Bard, a pro-Israeli, Jewish-American activist. It is hard to imagine these four authors getting along around one dinner table. But they do share something: All are, to various degrees, uneasy with the idea of national identity....
If the foreseeable future holds stability for Israel's democracy, democratization for Palestine, and peace for both, that future will be tied to national self-determination. It will have to rely on stable nation-states. Transcending nationalism would be, in this case, promoting civil war.
Looking beyond the case of Israel and Zionism, one wonders if the rising anti-national mood does not indicate a more general flow in contemporary liberal logic: Liberalism and democracy may be drifting apart.
Reducing democracy to liberalism's protection of individual rights, and positing them in opposition to nationalism, may indeed be a step on the way to transcending nation-states. But transcending nation-states may prove to transcend democracy along with them. Some very important individual human rights may be increasingly guarded, but citizens may lose control over their institutions and political fates....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
The future of the state of Israel is once again a topic of heated public debate. For good reasons: The possibility of a nuclear threat from a hostile Iran is one; deadlock in the peace process in the region, and the chance of a gradual shift into chronic civil war between Israelis and Palestinians, is another. But it has become common in some circles to ask not only whether Israel can survive, but also if it has a right to.
Some commentators believe that "the Jewish Question" that has been buzzing around in the West for some three centuries — the question of how this ancient people, the Jews, should fit into a modern political order — should be reopened. National self-determination for Jews in a state of their own, such critics say, can no longer be part of a morally acceptable answer. That is a telling development. As in the past, Western attitudes to the "Jewish Question" are reliable indications of larger political moods and of the shifting meanings of political concepts.
The first thing one senses about the framing of the topic today is hardly a surprise: the growing unease with nation-states. The horrors of Fascism and Nazism made us all wary of extreme nationalism. Until the 1970s, national-liberation movements in rapidly collapsing Western colonies still reminded the democratic world that nationalism is not always the enemy of liberty but sometimes its ally. But the decline of colonialism and the deterioration of liberation movements into third-world tyrannies, combined with the rise of the European Union and globalization, changed that. The postcolonial era gave rise to a hope of transcending nationalism, and has relegated nationalist sentiments in the West's political imagination to the parties of reaction. Current debates about Israel's future clearly reflect that trend. But they also indicate a less-obvious feature of the antinational mood: a growing rift between liberalism and democracy.
A recent wave of books on the future of Israel offers a glimpse into that tendency. The four discussed here (there are many others) are polemical rather than scholarly, and they are vastly different from one another. One is an autobiographical account, by Daniel Cil Brecher, a German Jew who immigrated to Israel and then back to Europe; another is the work of a French Jewish journalist, Sylvain Cypel, who spent more than a decade in Israel; the third is a fiery anti-Zionist exhortation, by Joel Kovel, a Jewish psychiatrist and now a professor of social studies at Bard College, who challenged Ralph Nader for the presidential nomination of the Green Party; and the last is an analysis of the challenges facing Israel, by Mitchell G. Bard, a pro-Israeli, Jewish-American activist. It is hard to imagine these four authors getting along around one dinner table. But they do share something: All are, to various degrees, uneasy with the idea of national identity....
If the foreseeable future holds stability for Israel's democracy, democratization for Palestine, and peace for both, that future will be tied to national self-determination. It will have to rely on stable nation-states. Transcending nationalism would be, in this case, promoting civil war.
Looking beyond the case of Israel and Zionism, one wonders if the rising anti-national mood does not indicate a more general flow in contemporary liberal logic: Liberalism and democracy may be drifting apart.
Reducing democracy to liberalism's protection of individual rights, and positing them in opposition to nationalism, may indeed be a step on the way to transcending nation-states. But transcending nation-states may prove to transcend democracy along with them. Some very important individual human rights may be increasingly guarded, but citizens may lose control over their institutions and political fates....