Greater Surbiton

Happy sixtieth birthday, Israel ! It should not be necessary to explain why today, formally the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s independence, is worth celebrating for those of us who are not Israelis. The survival of a nation that has been threatened with destruction is cause for celebration. The fact that nationally conscious Jews have been able to exercise their right to self-determination, and establish a homeland that has successfully provided a safe haven for members of the long-persecuted Jewish people, is cause for celebration. And the fact that an Israeli nation exists at all is cause for celebration. This is not to say that the process by which the Jewish state came into being, or its actions since its birth, are without their moral ambiguities - far from it. But these moral ambiguities are not reasons why Israeli independence should not be celebrated; merely why Israeli policy needs to change. One day, it should be possible to celebrate Israel’s anniversary in the knowledge that the moral ambiguities are all in the past.

Israel’s critics point out that the establishment of the State of Israel involved the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians - for Palestinians, the ‘nakba’. This is true, but frequently taken out of context: Israel is no different from most of the world’s other nation-states, which are founded upon the oppression and ethnic cleansing of other peoples. Beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the emergence of a modern nation-state of England, Britain and the United Kingdom and their evolution over hundreds of years involved the colonisation, dispossession and forcible assimilation of the Irish, as well as an almost unrivalled programme of imperial aggression and expansion overseas. But there is no way that our English and British nationhood can be divorced from this heritage. The modern French nation-state was founded with the Great Revolution of 1789, an event that is widely viewed as marking the birth of modern politics, yet it quickly involved the genocidal or proto-genocidal persecution of the people of the Vendee, acts of massive territorial conquest and, under Napoleon, a failed genocidal project directed against the black population of Haiti. The US is founded upon the genocide of the Native Americans, without which it would not exist. Yet one could not expect the French not to celebrate the Revolution, or Americans not to celebrate Independence Day.

Israelis may feel it is unfair of me to compare them with great imperial powers. So it is - I cite these examples to dispense with the myth of ‘good’ Western nations vis-a-vis ‘bad’ others. In the moral ambiguities of its creation, Israel more closely resembles the nation-states of Central Europe and the Balkans - appropriately, since Israel is itself a post-Ottoman state many of whose citizens originated in Central Europe. Where these nation-states are concerned, who was the ethnic-cleanser and who was the victim largely depended upon who happened to win the war. This was the case with Israel and the Palestinians: had the Arabs won in the 1940s, the extermination and explusion of the Jewish population of Palestine would have resulted. Throughout the region of Greater Europe, the question of which nation was dispossessed was open to question; the fact that dispossession would take place was not.

Today’s relatively ethnically homogenous states of Poland and the Czech Republic are founded upon the massive ethnic-cleansing of ethnic Germans after World War II, involving millions of victims. The Balkan states - Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey - are all in their present forms, to varying degrees, products of ethnic cleansing. The Orthodox Christian states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece were founded upon the slaughter and expulsion of a large part of their Ottoman Muslim inhabitants, and ideed upon the slaughter and expulsion of other Orthodox Christians. Romania had a large Jewish population and an exceptionally anti-Semitic political culture that culminated in massive Romanian participation in the Holocaust and the post-war emigration of Romanian Jews. The establishment of the Turkish nation-state involved the genocide of the Armenians, followed by the expulsion of at least one and a quarter million Greeks (or Turkish-speaking Christians) - which parallelled the Greek expulsion of a smaller number of largely Greek-speaking Muslims. Most recently, the establishment of independent Croatia involved the exodus of 150,000 Serb civilians from the ‘Krajina’ region and the slaughter of hundreds of them. I am leaving aside here the question of the respective rights and wrongs of these cases, or of how blame should be apportioned - that the formation of modern nation-states involves a process of ethnic homogenisation accompanied by real horrors should be indisputable.

There is no point pretending, therefore, that the establishment of modern nation-states - Israel included - is without its profound moral ambiguities. Yet it is the modern system of nation-states upon which our system of world politics is built - we can no more abolish nation-states than we can abolish modern politics. Indeed, nation-statehood is the prerequisite for liberal democracy: dynastic states such as the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and multinational ’socialist’ federations such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had to give way to sovereign nation-states for Europe to become a continent of democracies. Perhaps even more importantly, the people of the world love their nation-states, which they consider part of themselves. Asking the Israelis or anyone else to renounce their national identity is a violation of the most dearly felt feelings of ordinary people.

What is essential for the transition to full, post-nationalist democracy, however, is for members of every nation to face up to the moral ambiguities involved in the creation of their national state. This is not a question merely of assuaging liberal guilt. The crimes involved in the creation of a nation-state poison the functioning of its democracy and its relations with its neighbours. This poison can only be purged from its body politic by a recognition of its crimes. Turkey’s difficulty in functioning as a democracy is closely related to its unwillingness to face up to the Armenian Genocide or to the existence of a Kurdish people within its borders - hence it cannot fully permit freedom of speech, as this would result in open discussion of the Armenian Genocide and open expressions of Kurdish national politics. Greece’s imperialistic policy toward the Republic of Macedonia today is not based on any genuine national interest, but is a product of a nationalist ideology that guided a century of Greek colonisation, ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation in Greek Macedonia, of which the denial of the existence of a Macedonian nationality was a necessary part. The US’s record remains far from perfect, but in the US there is at least full freedom of speech - hence the possibility for films such as ‘Dances with Wolves’, that portray Native Americans sensitively and as victims of white oppression, to reach a mass audience. The American public still needs to face up to the genocide of the Native Americans, something that would produce a healthier American democracy and more politically aware citizenry. But we are still a long way off from the day when mass popular Turkish audiences will watch films of the ’Dances with Wolves’ variety about the Armenian Genocide, or Greek audiences about the colonisation of Greek Macedonia, or Israeli audiences about the nakba.

So far as Israel is concerned, its record of democracy and human rights concerning its own citizens compares very favourably with most other Middle Eastern countries, but very badly with just about any West European country, because its stage of national development more closely resembles Turkey or Greece than France or the Netherlands. The two deformations resulting from the nature of Israel’s birth are, firstly, a failure to embrace the concept of a multi-ethnic citizenry and accord equal rights to all its citizens regardless of ethnicity, resulting in suffering and injustice for Israeli Arabs; and, secondly, a continued policy of colonisation in the West Bank, resulting in massive suffering for the occupied Palestinians. These deformations are, of course, linked to the behaviour of the Arab states and the refusal of most of them to recognise Israel, as well as to the Palestinians’ own behaviour - but this is not ultimately a question of apportioning blame. Like every nation-state, Israel needs to develop a post-nationalist national ideology if it is to complete its national and democratic development. This means becoming a genuinely Israeli nation-state, i.e. a state of the Israeli nation; a state of the citizens of Israel - rather than simply a Jewish state in which non-Jews are second-class citizens. Jews would still form a comfortable majority in Israel, thereby guaranteeing Jewish national self-determination. But a Jewish ethnic majority can comfortably exist with a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity - as all concepts of citizenship should be, from the US and France to Israel and the Arab states. And as the American and French models show, a concept of citizenship blind to ethnicity rests upon identification with the state’s legal borders - hence no colonisation projects directed against neighbouring peoples.

As a Croat, I am very pleased that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is forcing Croats to face up to the crimes carried out in the course of their War of Independence. All Croatian children should celebrate this War of Independence, but they should also learn about its moral ambiguities - the crimes against Serb civilians and the parallel attempt, which thankfully was defeated, to expand into Bosnia. They should learn about Croatian resistance to the Nazis in the form of the Partisan movement, of which they should rightfully feel proud, but also about the Croatian Ustasha genocide of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - and, of course, about Partisan atrocities. Above all, they should be taught that theirs is a multiethnic nation that encompasses Serbs, Bosniaks and others, who do not cease thereby to be Serbs or Bosniaks. One should be able to be an ethnic Serb and at the same time belong to the Croatian nation as fully as an ethnic Croat, without abandoning one’s Serb identity, just as one should be able to be an ethnic Arab or Palestinian and belong to the Israeli nation as fully as an ethnic Jew, without abandoning one’s ethnic Arab or Palestinian identiy.

When this happens, a national anniversary becomes something that everyone, regardless of ethnic background, can celebrate without reservation.

David Zarnett has written a devastating critique for Democratiya of Edward Said’s disgraceful record over Kosovo, about which I have been meaning to comment since it appeared at the start of this month. Some time ago, David wrote to me asking my opinion as to whether an article on Said and Kosovo would be a worthy endeavour; I remember expressing to him a certain scepticism as to whether Said had written enough about Kosovo to make an in-depth study feasible. I am sorry to say that my scepticism has proven unfounded and that David’s judgement as to the relevance of this topic has been entirely vindicated - Said wrote much more about Kosovo than he should have. I am sorry, because it means that yet another eminent left-wing intellectual may be added to the list of those prepared to denigrate the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and minimise their suffering, for the sake of the ‘higher cause’ of scoring cheap points against the US. Said was not, as I had imagined, someone who had simply added his voice casually to the ‘anti-imperialist’ chorus at the time of the Kosovo War in 1999, but a dyed-in-the-wool anti-American zealot to whom the question of whether the Kosovo Albanians would be able to live in their own country, or whether they would become the Palestinians of Europe, mattered absolutely nothing. Indeed, he was much happier with the idea of the Kosovo Albanians losing their homeland and becoming a diaspora than he was with the idea of the US intervening militarily.

The reason this is particularly shocking in Said’s case is, of course, because he was himself a Palestinian; indeed, the most eminent intellectual champion of the Palestinian cause in the Western world. Said perceived a parallel between the fate of the Kosovo Albanians in 1999 and the fate of the Palestinians in 1948; in an article published during the Kosovo War, he wrote of the ’persecution, ethnic cleansing and continued oppression of Albanians in the province of Kosovo by the Serbian forces of Slobodan Milosevic’, before adding that ’for Palestinians, 1948 was like this minus CNN: at that time 780,000 were evicted from their houses and property by Zionist forces. They remain a nation in exile fifty-one years later.’ But his perception of this parallel did not lead him to express the slightest solidarity with the Kosovo Albanians - on the contrary…

I do not wish to plunder Zarnett’s splendid article for quotes showing just how far Said was prepared to go in minimising both the suffering of the Albanians and the crimes of the Milosevic regime; I’d recommend instead reading the article directly. Suffice to say that Said used the term ‘Sunday school picnic’ in reference to the fate of Milosevic’s Albanian victims. A fate that was, in his opinion, similar to that which befell the Palestinians in 1948, only with added CNN coverage.

On Sunday evening I had the privilege of attending a lecture given by Richard Perle at the Finchley Synagogue, on the topic of whether peace is possible in the Middle East. Perle has been one of a number of US officials who have promoted a progressive vision of US foreign policy. In an earlier era, a US overthrow of a hostile dictator would probably have been followed simply by his replacement with a pro-American dictator, yet it was thanks to the vision of Perle and other neoconservatives that the overthrow of Saddam was followed by the establishment of a democracy in Iraq. An Iraqi democrat who attended last night’s meeting gave his thanks to Perle and his colleagues, describing them as architects who had drawn up a beautiful plan, only to see it spoiled by mistakes during the construction. Perle gave his blessing also to the plea from an Iranian dissident, who was also present, that the US should support the democratic movement in Iran. He has been a principled champion of the defence of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo from Milosevic’s aggression and tyranny and critic of Putin’s brutal repression in Chechnya.

In his speech last night, Perle highlighted not only the obstacle to Middle Eastern peace represented by traditional US foes like the Iranian and Syrian regimes, but also the threat posed by the regime in Saudi Arabia which, as he pointed out, spreads the poison of Islamic extremism across the globe. He criticised the British government for providing the red carpet treatment to Saudi King Abdullah during his recent visit. It is deeply ironic that neoconservatives like Perle have been so vilified by fashionable left-liberal opinion, when it is precisely they who have broken with the prevailing orthodoxy among Western policy-makers, that realpolitik requires the support of brutal dictators who happen to be friendly to the West. Neoconservaties like Perle are doing precisely what traditional leftists should be doing but in most cases are not: agitating against the dictators.

It was in his discussion of the Israel-Palestine question that I found myself disagreeing with Richard; not because I disagreed with his principles, but because I disagree with how he interprets them. Responding to a question from an American graduate student, who asked him whether the US really derived any benefit from the alliance with Israel, he responded that the day the US abandoned a friend to ingratiate itself with the enemies of that friend will be the day that the US loses all moral authority as a superpower, and that it will be perceived globally as having done so. Israel is the US’s friend, it is a democracy and a loyal ally, and the US should support its friend. If I understood correctly, Perle interprets this to mean supporting Israel in all its outstanding areas of dispute with the Palestinians.

I entirely agree that the US should support Israel. The question is: what does ’supporting Israel’ mean ? What does it mean to be a friend ?

A true friend does not just support everything one does, even when one is not in the right. A true friend should be prepared to tell one when one is in the wrong and to dissuade one from a course of action that will lead one to harm. A true friend of Turkey would advise it to withdraw from Cyprus; a true friend of Serbia would advise it to give up Kosovo; a true friend of Iran would advise it to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. If the US is to be a true friend of Israel, it is not enough just to support Israel against its enemies; it must also guide it away from a self-destructive policy.

Israel’s waging of a territorial conflict with the Palestinians in the West Bank is a self-destructive policy. Because while Israel is in the right in its determination to defend itself from neighbouring regimes or movements that seek its destruction, such as Ahmadinejad’s regime in Tehran or Hezbollah in Lebanon; while it is in the right to face down enemies that deny its right to exist; while it is right to defend its population from suicide bombers; in its policy in the West Bank, Israel is in the wrong. No amount of pointing to the crimes of the other side - great though they are - can hide this fact.

It is often, and rightly, pointed out by Israel’s defenders that critics of Israel, from the ranks of the Islamic world, the left-liberal intelligentsia in the West, and elsewhere, will single out Israeli crimes and misdemeanours for condemnation while ignoring the equal or greater crimes and misdemeanours of neighbouring Muslim states: Syria’s Hama massacre and promotion of the Lebanese civil war; Iran’s persecution of the Ahwazi Arabs; the genocide in Darfur; the brutal oppression of women and absence of democracy in Egypt and Saudia Arabia; and so forth. But it does no good to point out this hypocrisy and condemn all these crimes, and then to turn a blind eye to the utterly unjustifiable Israeli policy of colonisation and settlement building in the West Bank; the denial of human rights to the West Bank Palestinians; the attempt to squeeze them into an ever-smaller slice of their homeland.

The reason it does no good - leaving aside the question of morality - is that it is extremely damaging to us in our life-and-death struggle against Islamist terrorism and the dictatorships that promote it. In this struggle, the propaganda war is all important. A large part of our difficulties in Iraq stem from the fact that - unlike in Kuwait in 1991, Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001 - we did not win the propaganda war prior to our military intervention. It might once have been thought that the US was powerful enough simply to forge ahead with its preferred policy regardless of what the world thought, but that does not appear so feasible today. We are waging a struggle with the Islamists for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims across the world, and we cannot afford to be the bad guys anywhere at all. Because our enemies will always highlight our errors - Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and so forth.

It is, arguably, hypocritical when Muslims complain about the mistreatment of other Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere while ignoring the persecution of Muslim populations by Muslim regimes, in Darfur, Khuzestan, eastern Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. But the problem is not that they are highlighting the plight of Palestians, Kashmiris and Chechens, but that they are failing to highlight the persecution of Muslims by other Muslims. Both Muslims and non-Muslims should be highlighting alike the plight of Palestinians and Ahwazi Arabs, Kashmiris and Sudanese, Chechens and Saudi Shias.

For better or for worse, the Palestinian question has come to assume tremendous symbolic importance in the eyes of many Muslims - and indeed of many non-Muslims. Objectively speaking, the oppression of Palestinians by Israel in the West Bank forms only a small part of the total oppression that is occurring in the Middle East. But symbolically, the Palestinian question has come to assume an importance out of all proportion to its objective importance in Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Our credibility in the eyes of world opinion, and particularly world Muslim opinion, rests disproportionately on our ability to deliver a just settlement to the Israel-Palestine dispute. Not a pro-Palestinian settlement, but a settlement that is just for both sides.

The Israelis and Palestinians are two great nations; equally worthy of freedom, independence and security. This has nothing to do with the awfulness of the leaderships of one or both of them. The fascistic, anti-Semitic nature of the Hamas movement, the suicide bombings, or the corrupt brutality of Yasser Arafat do not detract from the Palestinian right to national independence, any more than the massive war-crimes of Ariel Sharon, the anti-Arab racism of parts of the Israeli right or the pro-Nazi and terrorist past of Yitzhak Shamir detract from the right of Israel to security and self-defence.

I have yet to hear, let alone be convinced by, any Israeli justification for the existence of the West Bank settlements, or for exclusive Israeli possession of Jerusalem. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank may have made military sense when Israel was threatened with the conventional armies of neighbouring Arab states, but today the threat is different: suicide bombers, rocket attacks and potentially a nuclear strike. The occupation of the West Bank does not help Israel to defend itself from these threats, but it does massively alienate world opinion. Furthermore, Israel’s security rests on the sanctity of legally established borders; by questioning the sanctity of these borders in the goal of annexing West Bank territory, Israel is undermining the very institution that underpins its own territorial integrity. The occupation of the West Bank and the abuse of Palestinian human rights that this involves drives ordinary Palestinians into the arms of the extremists. The longer this goes on, the more danger there is of Israel eventually coming to grief at the hands of its enemies. And all for a few small slices of territory that, objectively, it needs less than the Palestinians do.

As an outsider with no personal emotional ties with either Israel or Palestine, any settlement that would award the Palestinians less than 22% of the territory of historic Palestine, or that would award all Jerusalem to just one of the two nations, would strike me as deeply unjust. No matter how awful the Palestinian leadership is, the Palestinian people deserve better than that. It is only through a just settlement - an Israel secure in its pre-’67 borders, an independent Palestine comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian abandonment of the right to return to pre-’67 Israel in exchange for fair compensation - that a stable peace can be born. A peace that would undercut the appeal of Hamas and other extremists and remove this symbolic injustice in the eyes of world opinion while safeguarding Israel’s security.

If Hamas were to continue to attack Israel from the West Bank following an Israeli withdrawal, Israel would be in an incomparably stronger position strategically than it is today. Because Israel would be unquestionably and totally the good guy; it would lose its negative image in the eyes of all but the extremists; it would enjoy the sympathy of the whole world.

That’s something anyone would want for a friend.