Talk:Antisemitism/Archive 2

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Others would argue that Palestinians are embittered because they feel they were unfairly expelled from their country. This has nothing do to with religion.

We are not talking about proposals to a Palestinian states; we're talking about the reason why most Muslim Arabs (non-Palestinians) find Israel to be religiously inacceptible. I feel the sentence above was off-topic, although the subject could probably be discussed (consequences of the arab-Israeli conflict as opposed to the inherent hostility towards Jews). --Uri

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I wish this sentence hadn't been deleted from the article:

Others would argue that Palestinians are embittered because they feel they were unfairly expelled from their country. This has nothing do to with religion.

I have re-written it as:

Some advocates explain the bitterness of Palestinian Arabs as a natural response to what they call unfair expulsion from "their country", an argument which presumes that the land from which they were expelled was rightfully "theirs" (see Palestinian homeland).

--Ed Poor 12:30 Aug 8, 2002 (PDT)

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I've modified the "anti-zionism" section slightly, to remove the old canard of there being an "arab state" (rather than various states which have an Arab majority), and added the following explanatory text to the paragraph immediately afterwards:

For example, there is no specific "Arab state", just as there is no specific "European state", "African state", "Homosexual state", "Heterosexual state" or "Hispanic state". Rather, there are a number of nation states, many of which have a majority which shares racial or cultural characteristics in addition to their citizenship, which is also shared by minorities which do not possess those "majority characteristics."

This revision seems to more closely approximate a NPOV on this argument Jacob

I have to remove this proposed change. Your word games have been carefully constructed in order to deligitimize the State of Israel alone. That's a violation of NPOV. It is also intellectually dishonest, as Arabs themselves say that Arabs deserve to have ethnically Arab states. In fact, the vast majority of Arabs feel that this is valid; this is why so many ethnic Arab states exists. I seriously doubt that they are lying about their own beliefs. Your claims about "homosexual" states are so irrelevant, that I can't believe that even you take them seriously. They are so obviously not relevant that one can only conclude you are grasping at straws in order to deligitimize the rights of Jewish people. Curiously, you don't slander Japan, China, or any of the Arab or Hispanic nations as wrong for their mere existence, but you clearly imply that it is racist when Jews want to have the same rights as other human beings. That is precisely what many Jews view as Anti-Semitism, and what all Jews agree is anti-Zionism. You deny Jewish people the same rights that ever other people on this planet are allowed to possess. RK

No, the previous word games (the ones which you have restored) were carefully constructed in order to cast a spurious legitimacy onto Israel alone.

Just as Japanese people have a right to have a Japanese nation, just as Chinese have a right to live in a Chinese nation, and just as Arabs have the right to live in any nearly two dozen distinct Arab nations, Jews too have a right to live freely among themselves as well. This is what Jewish writers since the Emancipation have termed "normalcy"; the goal of Jews to live as other peoples do.

The comparison between Chinese/Japanese and Jewish is spurious, the former being based on membership of a country (the right claimed by Jews), while the latter is based on ethnicity/religion. If the comparison is to stand, a parallel needs to be drawn, demonstrating that ethnicity/religion/nationality are equivalent concepts - as it stands, you're simply stating that by sleight of hand, and hoping that that statement is accepted. Which is extremely biased towards the Israeli POV. Similary, why do you claim legitimacy by extension with the existence of predominantly arab states, but reject extending that argument when it implies a need to have "European", "African", "homosexual" and "Hispanic" nation states? Is it because the "arab" example is part of Israel's mythos, and has been claimed so often that it has received a kind of unthinking acceptance, whereas extending the argument shows it to be a ridiculous one?

There are two issues here: one has to do with different kinds of identities, the other is methodological. The identity question is complicated because in the 195h century, when modern Zionism developed, "Jews" were identified both by religion and race. Both of these categories (and for present purposes I think "race" and "ethnicity" and "nationality" are interchangable)are salient. When Israel declares itself a "Jewish" state, it is not defining itself as a religious state but as an ethnic/national (and, in the 19th century context, racial) state. I do not know if Saudi Arabia defines itself as an "Arab" state -- I do not know if it claims to be a "nation" state at all, although the term "Arabia" in the name of the country suggests as much. But Saudi Arabia most definitely defines itself as a Muslim state. The point is, this is an exclusive way of defining a state, and the point of this is, you cannot criticize Israel for having an exclusive notion of its statehood without also criticizing countries like Saudi Arabia.

The second issue is methodological -- how do we understand the role of identity in modern states? Much of the discussion of Zionism hinges on the Declaration of Independence, a document which defines Israel as a Jewish State. The question is, are such documents (whether they have the force or law or not) the only way to study the role of identity in state formation? If a country has no document officially identifying itself as a nation state, does this mean that it is not a nation state? I do not think so. Indeed, the most interesting work in political theory these days includes critical scholarship that reveals the underpinnings of modern nation-states, how states that have been held up as paragons of liberal politics (in which people are only citizens, and as citizens are all equal, and any other identity -- religious, national, ethnic, racial, is irrelevant) in fact have relied on national and ethnic identity. Israel has a document that defines itself as a nation state because the Zionist project had to involve a relocation of people. No such relocation was necessary for Italy, France, Germany (well, yes a little with Germany -- and interestingly enough Germany has a "law of return" very similar to Israel's), and England. Nevertheless, if you look at documents from the nineteenth century you will see that at the same time that these states were sometimes celebrating liberal ideals (all citizens are equal; any other identity is irrelevant), they were also amploying nationalist discources to legitimate themselves.

I am no expert on the history of Arab states. But I would not be at all surprised if during the struggle against the Ottoman Empire, and later the British and French, emergent leaders appealed to some sort of "Arab nationalism." This is an empirical question, and someone who has studied these countries has to inform us of whether this did indeed occur. But you will not find it out just by looking at the Syrian or Jordanian constitution -- you need to study a variety of data. Slrubenstein

Your line "for present purposes I think "race" and "ethnicity" and "nationality" are interchangable" seems to me to presuppose the outcome of the discussion, which is whether "race" and "ethnicity" are interchangable concepts with "nationality". Why should those three concepts be interchangable? For example, an individual may be of Chinese ethnicity but of US nationality - the two are not mutually incompatible, and do not at all imply Chinese nationality (though such an individual may hold or be entitled to dual Sino-USA citizenship, that is by no means necessarily the case). Jacob

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The comparison between Chinese/Japanese and Jewish is spurious, the former being based on membership of a country (the right claimed by Jews), while the latter is based on ethnicity/religion.

No, this is false. The Chinese and Japanese themselves have alway held that they were (respectively) both ethnicities and nationalities, much in the same way that the Jewish people always held. The same ws true in the past of the Greeks, the Romans, the Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Persians. The big difference is that the Chinese and Japanese survived attempts to conquer them, while the Jewish people did not, and only recently was able to restablish their state. RK

If the comparison is to stand, a parallel needs to be drawn, demonstrating that ethnicity/religion/nationality are equivalent concepts - as it stands, you're simply stating that by sleight of hand, and hoping that that statement is accepted. Which is extremely biased towards the Israeli POV

Nonsense. You are using your own defintions of "ethnicity" and "nationalist", and then Jews whose beliefs aren't the same as yours. As S. L. Rubestein has written here on Wikipedia many times, the Jewish concepts of ethnicity and nationality are not the same as the ones that you are referring to. As he has pointed out, it was traditional for nationality and ethnicity and religion to be fused concepts, and it is only a relatively recent innovation for them to have become separated. So are you demanding that Jew must change their beliefs and actions to fit these modern new definitions. If yoy do that, you must also do that for Japanese, Chinese and Arabs. But you choose to pick on the Jews, and on the Jews alone. This kind of unfairness is what many Jews call anti-Semitism. RK

Such "changes" to the definitions have already been absorbed by other nations - including Japan, China, Iraq, Saudi, etc - arab ethnicity does not make one a citizen of Saudi, only Saudi citizenship does that. Similarly, Chinese ethnicity does not make for Chinese nationality - indeed, there are many people of Chinese ancestry whose nationality is, for example, British or French, rather than Chinese, and who are not entitled to Chinese citizenship. In other wodes, the concepts of "race", "ethnicity" and "nationality" are not interchangable. Jacob

Similary, why do you claim legitimacy by extension with the existence of predominantly arab states, but reject extending that argument when it implies a need to have "European", "African", "homosexual" and "Hispanic" nation states?

I have no idea what you are talking about. I never argued against the the right of black African states to exist, nor did I argue against the right of Hispanic states (such as Spain) to have the right to exist. You are attacking statements that no one has made. RK

No, I was commenting on your line above ("Your claims about "homosexual" states are so irrelevant, that I can't believe that even you take them seriously."), which focussed on a single word in a list of characteristics which groups often use to define themselves.

Is it because the "arab" example is part of Israel's mythos,

There is no "mythos" of Arab nations. Many ethnic and national Arab states do exist; this is just an indisputable fact. I can't trust people who have the nerve to claim otherwise. RK

I was not claiming that states do not exist which has a majority of people who share a given ethnicity - indeed, I said precisely that in the addition which you deleted from the article. Rather, I am arguing that ethnicity is not the same thing as nationality - the former is a sociological phenomenon, while the latter is a legal one. I refer you to the "US citizen of Chinese ancestry" example above, though use a "Morrocan citizen of Jewish ancestry" if you prefer. You seem to be arguing that the terms "ethicity" and "nationality" are interchangable, and hence a given ethnicity necessarly implies a given nationality (or, if you prefer, one of a given set of nationalities). That is clearly not the case. Jacob

Jacobgreenbaum misunderstands the current discussion -- we are not using the term "nationality" in the legal sense. This is an ambiguity that should be cleared up in the article. The point is, some times people use the word "national" in the legal sense (a citizen of), but other times people use the word differently. In the first case, "national" is definitely NOT comparable to ethnicity. In the second case, it is. In the second case, some political theorists still distinguish between nationalities, which are indigenous to a place, and ethnicities, which are immigrants. When I wrote above that for present purposes, ethnicity and nationality are interchangable (with race, as well), I obviously did not mean "national" in the legal sense. Also, when I wrote "for present purposes" I meant just that -- for this discussion of the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. I do not think it is useful at this point to bring in very different examples (Chinese-Americans); in any event, even if you think it would be useful to bring in such diverse examples, the whole point of the phrase "for present purposes" was to highlight the fact that my argument is restricted to a specific case, and not meant to be generalizable to other cases.

So I see most of the above discussion as being about semantics. Obviously there are Arab citizens of Israel, and if you want to define "national" as a citizen, then these Arabs are Israeli nationals. That this is so indicates that in many ways Israel is a modern liberal state.

Nevertheless, if we want to discuss Zionism and anti-Semitism, we need to use the word "national" in a very diffferent way -- in a way that corresponds to the ways politicans and scholars have used it in discussion the rise of nation-states (from the late 18th century on) and "nationalism" as an ideology. In these contexts, "national" clearly is much more like race or ethnicity than "citizen." Slrubenstein

Actually, from what you write above, it really does sound to me like you are using "nationality" in the unique sense - unique to Israel, that is - of "ethnicity" when referring to Israel, and using the same word ("nationality") in a very different sense, "legal nationality" when referring to everyone else. In which case, how is it "anti-semitic" to insist that the same definition (the generally accepted legal sense) be applied in all cases? It seems to me that applying a different definition to a word specifically when discussing zionism as from discussing other subjects is, in itself, a dubious practice.

As for this being "semantics" - yes, it is: The article is arguing that "anti-zionism" equates to "anti-semitism" because it (anti-zionism) denies that ((ethnicity sense) "nationality" equates to ({legal sense) "nationality"}) for Jews while accepting the ((legal sense) "nationality") of non-Jews. However, and as my Chinese-American example makes clear, and as you appear to accept above, the ((ethnicity sense) "nationality") of non-Jews does not equate to their ((legal sense) "nationality"), since you are using very different definitions of "nationality" in each case. Giving the lie to the claim that anti-zionism is anti-semitic because it treats Jews as a special case, different from non-Jews. In fact, the equation of the two definitions of "nationality" is never made, neither for Jews nor for non-Jews, except by zionists, who appear to use whichever definition (ethnicity or legal) is most helpful to their argument at the time, blurring or ignoring your two different definitions in the process and treating - as you state - "ethnicity" and "nationality" as interchangable terms, even though no nations other than Israel (and, to some extent, Germany) treat those terms as interchangable.

If anything, then, what you state demolishes the argument in this article which equates anti-zionism with anti-semitism. Jacob

I do not think I am using "nationality" in a unique sense, although I do admit I am using it in a non-legal sense. France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia are nation-states. They are not just states, in which there are people who may be identified as "citizens" or "subjects." They are states whose legitimacy is in part based on the identification of a political boundary (the state) with a cultural boundary (the nation). This is an historical fact. It also raises the problem of how to deal with subjects or citizens who do not "belong" to the nation. In some cases such non-nationals (not in the legal sense where "national" simply = citizen, but in the cultural sense) are given "equal rights before the law, in some cases they are not. Some theorists like Jurgen Habermas and Brian Barry believe that this is possible, desirable, and sufficient. Like you, they would say that a particular state may have a majority of people who beling to a particular ethnic group of nation, but for them this is politically inconsequential (or rather, the state should involve legal apparatuses such that it would be inconsequential). But many others have pointed out that even when all citizens (regardless of nationality) are equal before the law, informal social institutions, and the implicit relationship between legal/political practices and culture, result in a situation where ethnicity and nationality really do matter, in a way that liberal constitutions cannot accommodate. All of this is preface to two points I want to make (and tried to make earlier): first, Israel is a nation-state, not because it defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence, but because it was founded precisely to mimic European nation-states like Germany, France, and England. Second, even if the Suadi Arabian constitution did not declare it to be an "Arab state," it is still a nation-state in the same way Israel is.

In any event, I do not think any "nation-state" is racist merely by virtue of being a nation-state. I am not accusing Israel of racism, nor am I accusing Saudi Arabia of racism.

you continue to conflate two notions of nation, with the effect of muddying the water. To say that there exists a nation and that nation deserves a state (a rationale for France and for Israel) does not mean that that state should exclude non-nationals, should deny them citizenship, or deny them equal rights as citizens. Zionists are claiming two things, in response to those who equate Zionism with racism: first, that anti-Zionists wish to deny the nation of Israel what the International community has allowed Czechs, Slovaks (you know, they now each have their own country -- a bi-national state was replaced by two nation-states), Lithuanians, etc. Second, that anti-Zionists hold Israel to a higher standard (of political rights) than its Arab neighbors.

By the way, this does not mean I think that any country should deprive its citizens of equal rights under the law -- my sense is that both Israel and Saudi Arabia have a lot of work yet to do to ensure this.

Thus, I would agree that perhaps a significant number of citizens (or subjects) of Israel and Saudi Arabia may be racists. And that will affect public poicy, often in bad ways. Slrubenstein

Hmmmm - I'm not talking about "racism" as such, but about the equation of ethnicity with nationality - and stating that denying that equation in general does not equate to anti-semitism when applying that principle to Israel. Jacob

I think that this more concise presentation of your view is reasonable, except you must explain that by "nationality" you mean solely in the sense of citizenship, because really many people do not mean it that way. Nevertheless, your view raises certain questions. On this basis, would you deny the Palestinians a state "of their own?" (I realize that we would still have to argue about whether Arab citizens of Israel are equal under the law, whether Palestinians living in Israel could enjoy all the rights of citizenship.) Were you opposed to the division of Czechoslovakia? Are you opposed to French law, whereby people born in France (even to parents who were born in France) may not be French citizens? Are you opposed to Germany's law of return? Are you equally a critic of the lack of democracy in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia? Do you believe that those four countries should (even as a condition for membership in the UN) adopt modern liberal constitutions (whereby anyone can be a citizen and all citizens are equal before the law; there is a strict separation of church and state; and strong laws against discrimination of minority ethnic groups)? I ask these questions in part out of sincere curiosity -- but also to suggest why many Zionists see a double-standard in current political opinion. Slrubenstein

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I left in the added "third path" of a bi-ethnic state. But I cut the following because it lacks NPOV and is inaccurate:

This is the situation in which the vast majority of the world's ethnic groups live, quite happily. However, most Zionists will accuse anybody who suggests this solution of anti-Semitism, because it denies their ambition to fulfil what they see as their rightful destiny; they believe that the land of Israel was promised to them, and to them alone, by God.

First, it is at best questionable that the vast majority of ethnic groups live in liberal-democratice, pluralistic, multi-ethnic states "happily." Look not only at the popular press, but at many academic journals and books, and you will see that the unhappiness of many people living in multi-ethnic states, and the fragility of the political institutions that sustain them (hello -- remember Yugoslavia?). This is not to say that a multi-ethnic state is in and of itself a bad idea or cannot work, nor is it to say that it is not a conceivable sollution to the current problems in Israel-Palestine. But it is simply false to say that this is the norm, and a generally succesful norm to boot. Let's see what happens in N. Ireland, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka first, shall we?

Second, those Zionists who pionered the "Jewish State" were largely atheists; although the Religious right is very influencial in Israel today, it would still be a huge error to think that belief in God or God's promise of the land of Canaan to the Jews is really behind what is going on. Believe me, if you convinced all Jews living in Israel that God did not exist (and therefore never gave them Israel -- and you know, by the way, some devout religious Jews are not Zionists), you would STILL have the problems we find today. To suggest that belief in God has something to do with the problem suggests false sollutions and will prevent us (or, them) from finding the right sollutions. Slrubenstein

Firstly: The third path isn't a "bi-ethnic state", which would barely be more equitable than a mono-ethnic state. It's very simple! All that is being suggested is a straightforward secular democracy, along the lines of the USA, the UK, Canada, France, and every single other regular democracy. It is the norm! You give examples of N. Ireland, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka etc. The "unhappiness" there is caused by inequality, not equality! Secondly: Maybe I was being charitable by attributing to religion the Zionists' desire to dominate all other ethnic groups in the area. If it is not religion then what is it? GrahamN 16:25 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

I think the rationale for the Jews wanting the "Holy Land" is that following World War II and the Holocaust, it seemed that the Jews needed a safe haven they could call their own, and the international community via the UN was willing to give them one. Wesley

This paragraph could go in another article:

There is also a large body of opinion that believes that the most just outcome in the area is for all the people in Israel/Palestine to share a single state in which all people will have equal status, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

How about proposals for a Palestinian state? --Ed Poor