Beinart Article Cont: Douthat gets owned 05/19/2010
Ross Douthat suggests that perhaps the declining attachment of secular American Jews, as described in Peter Beinart's essay, is a product of natural assimilation—as has happened to Irish and Italian Americans’ decrease in attachment for their respective homelands. The Economist’s Democracy in America blog (the Economist is so money!) basically takes Douthat to school:
Here's the thing: Italy and Ireland are not projects. There is no way for Italy or Ireland to fail to become Italy or Ireland, to traduce their founders' visions and disappoint some group of their citizens so bitterly that they would rather emigrate than participate in or legitimate them. But Israel, like America or the Soviet Union, is an eschatological and ideological project. And for most American Jews (though not for all Jews), the Zionist project has always envisioned a liberal, democratic state upholding the norms of citizenship and human rights that Theodore Herzl felt had been violated by European anti-Semitism. Just as American socialists could turn away from the USSR in the aftermath of the show trials, and just as some Americans periodically feel that political developments in the US constitute a betrayal of the ideals that make the nation what it is, liberal Jews brought up on a liberal, democratic (and often socialist) vision of Zionism are coming to feel that the actually-existing Israeli state is a betrayal of those Zionist ideals, and that it does not deserve their allegiance.
This is what is torturing the moral compass of liberal Zionists—the idea that Jews, so poorly treated as minorities in Europe, have failed to give equal rights to minorities in the Jewish state. Despite all the slogans—“Israeli Arabs are freer than Arabs in any other country”—Arabs are not functionally equal to Jews in Israel—definitely not in East Jerusalem, and lets not mention the West Bank. Some may argue that it is impossible to be liberal in the Middle Eastern environment. Nevertheless, what does this mean for the Zionist project? How can an illiberal Israel be a light upon nations?
Here's the thing: Italy and Ireland are not projects. There is no way for Italy or Ireland to fail to become Italy or Ireland, to traduce their founders' visions and disappoint some group of their citizens so bitterly that they would rather emigrate than participate in or legitimate them. But Israel, like America or the Soviet Union, is an eschatological and ideological project. And for most American Jews (though not for all Jews), the Zionist project has always envisioned a liberal, democratic state upholding the norms of citizenship and human rights that Theodore Herzl felt had been violated by European anti-Semitism. Just as American socialists could turn away from the USSR in the aftermath of the show trials, and just as some Americans periodically feel that political developments in the US constitute a betrayal of the ideals that make the nation what it is, liberal Jews brought up on a liberal, democratic (and often socialist) vision of Zionism are coming to feel that the actually-existing Israeli state is a betrayal of those Zionist ideals, and that it does not deserve their allegiance.
This is what is torturing the moral compass of liberal Zionists—the idea that Jews, so poorly treated as minorities in Europe, have failed to give equal rights to minorities in the Jewish state. Despite all the slogans—“Israeli Arabs are freer than Arabs in any other country”—Arabs are not functionally equal to Jews in Israel—definitely not in East Jerusalem, and lets not mention the West Bank. Some may argue that it is impossible to be liberal in the Middle Eastern environment. Nevertheless, what does this mean for the Zionist project? How can an illiberal Israel be a light upon nations?
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