I respect the Mondoweiss blog even though his point of view is the opposite of mine. He’s a leftist and therefore he does not see important differences based on religion and race. I see culture and nation as the product of race. I see culture as much more of a racial construct than race being a cultural construct.
I love Israel and I see it as an example of what a determined and intelligent people can achieve when they pursue their self-interest in a hostile region.
A nation’s first task is to survive and the best way to do this is get as strong as possible. The more cohesion, the more strength. I am glad that Jewish Israel puts its survival and unity before consideration of Western democratic values and the like.
Jewish values, just like Japanese values and American values, should mean first and foremost what is good for their group.
If Israel were 25% kinder to Palestinians, it would probably perish. If Israel were 25% tougher on Palestinians, it would suffer severe repercussions.
I see Shaked’s Jewish nationalism as an excellent model for all people. They should first develop their own cohesion and strength and outsiders should only be allowed in according to what is good for the host group. Orthodox Judaism makes conversion difficult. That’s a good model to follow for nations as well.
On the other hand, and this is where writers Philip Weiss, Kevin MacDonald and Albert S. Lindemann are particularly valuable, Jews and other groups should face the problems they create for others when they put their own interests first.
Last summer, about a week before Israel invaded Gaza and just one day before settlers in East Jerusalem kidnapped and murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, Israeli politician Ayelet Shaked took to Facebook to call for the genocide of Palestinians. Quoting an unpublished article by a settler activist, she wrote:
What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy…They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
Even in the fiercely nationalistic environment of Israeli politics, the far-right firebrand recently described in the Daily Beast as “The Scariest Politician in Israel” managed to stick out…
As it turns out, drawing on Jewish tradition to challenge Ayelet Shaked is a losing battle as well. Whenever Stone tried to broach the subject of “Jewish values,” it became evident that Shaked had no interest in such values, at least in the traditional religious sense of the term. Liberty, nonviolence, justice – to her and the Jewish Home party, all can be readily sacrificed to the overarching mission of ethnic and religious homogeneity. The ideology of Naftali Bennett is hostile to any interpretation of Judaism that would place greater emphasis on these values than on settlement expansion, wars of aggression, and the jailing of innocent refugees.
The more Stone tried to bring the discussion back to the topic of values, the more the two women talked past each other. Shaked claimed that Israel – unlike the U.S. – was simply not a country of immigrants, and that the refugee crisis must be addressed with proper consideration for the so-called demographic threat posed by a sudden influx of non-Jews.
There is something almost refreshing about Shaked’s bluntness, the shameless ease with which she warns of the demographic threat posed to Israel’s Jewish character by “infiltrators” and the bill she passed to stop them. The African immigrants she speaks of, many of whom arrive by foot, are fleeing horrific circumstances and are trying to make Israel their home. They have no intention to destroy the country or attach its inhabitants. Yet to Shaked, they are menaces nonetheless, solely by virtue of their not being Jewish. This is Zionism unvarnished, free of any mitigating factors – compassion, mercy, acceptance – that secular humanism might provide. Speaking at length about the conflict between Israel’s Jewish character and its supposed commitment to democracy, Shaked said there are three kinds of Israelis: those who see Judaism and democracy as equally important, those who prize Judaism over democracy, and those who want to be “democratic but not Jewish.” The very idea of a secular democratic state elicited a chuckle from someone behind me.
There are echoes of Trump in Shaked’s fear-mongering about “infiltrators” – to the Israeli right (and arguably to the Israeli public at large), Palestinians and Africans play the same role as Mexicans do to the American white nationalist crowd. What was striking about the event was just how nakedly Shaked played on fears of The Other – even using the phrase “the other” to describe those who fall outside the purview of Jewish self-interest. This Other includes refugees, asylum seekers, Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and Arab citizens of Israel.
