Tag Archives: Judaism

Jews and Israel, Nation and State

21 Saturday Jul 2018

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The Israeli Knesset passed on July 19 the contentious ‘Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People’ legislation with 62 votes in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions. The slim margin of victory is a good barometer of the divisions the law has exacerbated in the Israeli and Jewish communities, Arabs and Jews, sabra and Diaspora alike.

In essence, the Nation-State Bill (NSB) explicitly declares Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people” and is part of the Basic Laws that guide Israel as a constitution might other states. It further declares that the undivided city of Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state and that the state shall “encourage and promote” the “establishment and consolidation” of Jewish settlements. Other clauses of the Bill reiterate the status of Hebrew, the Sabbath, the anthem, national holidays, and the use of Jewish symbols by the state. Furthermore, Israel will remain open for Jewish immigration and strive to ensure the safety of Jews all around the world.

The Bill was first proposed by former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter in 2011 and has caused controversy ever since. The barrage of criticism has been loudest from Israel’s own post-Zionists and the United States, though Arab members of the Knesset and Europe have not been far behind in their hyperbolic condemnation of the law that heralds the birth of “fascism and apartheid.” The primary concern seems to be that such a law disturbs the equilibrium between Israel’s democracy and its Jewish identity.

There is a fundamental philosophical weakness in this line of argument and it is that it not only takes European social development as normative but also considers only the outcomes that conform to particular theories or ideologies. In doing so, it reaffirms the self-indulgent belief that a liberal politics is truly pluralistic and neutral whereas liberalism actually advocates a dogma of its own that is no less rigid or exclusive than others.

Despite the controversy, if there is one thing that most Israelis agree on, it is that Israel is a Jewish state. The bulk of the NSB – its reaffirmation of Israel’s national symbols and its designation as a safe haven for international Jewry – is de facto law and finds wide consensus among Israelis. The need to restate the obvious and enshrine it into law, however, comes from the equally widespread feeling that the Jewish character of the Israeli state has been gradually undermined by post-Zionist intellectuals, the New Historians, and an increasingly liberal activist Supreme Court beginning with Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006.

The Basic Laws, which serve as the constitution of Israel, clearly establish the civil and political rights of its citizens and make an overt commitment to secularism and democracy. Although the Declaration of Independence unequivocally defines Israel as a Jewish state, what that constitutes was left ambiguous; the NSB remedies this lacuna by providing an anchor to the state’s Jewish heritage and identity.

The circumstances in which Israel was created in 1948, the Jewish experience in Europe over the preceding two millennia, and the status of the country as the sole Jewish state in the world merit some consideration in the Knesset’s desire to cement the state’s Jewish character. Despite the demonisation, much of what the NSB has proposed is no different from many Western democracies. If Israel’s observation of the Sabbath or prevalence of the menorah make it less secular, the same might be argued for Christian countries who observe Sunday as the day of rest and display Biblical symbols in their sigils.

Opponents of the NSB are worried that the reservation of the right to national self-determination in Israel only to the Jewish people (1C) may put the country’s sizable Arab minority at a disadvantage. Yet it is unfathomable that any sovereign state allow national self-determination to any group other than the dominant majority. Spain, for example, has little patience for Basque or Catalan national expression and Italy may not react well to the Alto Adige returning to Austria.

Related to self determination is the encouragement and promotion of Jewish settlements (7A). While foreign critics are worried that this spells a fresh wave of Jewish halutzim to Judea and Samaria, David Hazony, executive director of the Israel Innovation Fund, points out that the Hebrew word used – hityashvut – reminds Israelis of the Negev and the Galilee.

Another fear opponents have of preferential treatment given to Jewish settlements is that the law could cascade into further housing discrimination against Arabs. Again, this is unlikely as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty passed in 1992 provide certain protections. The NSB, however, does weaken the ability of the court to intervene in mundane quotidian matters of budgetary allocations favouring Jewish population centres over Arab areas. It is important to note that there are already over 400 yishuvim – villages – in the Negev and Galilee that are preferentially Jewish settlements whose right the Supreme Court upheld in 2014 to appoint “acceptance committees” to vet candidates who wish to move to these settlements.

However, conservatives might want to reconsider giving legal force to communal segregation. The right to create exclusive communities does not sit well with a modern cosmopolitan democracy and can only be a recipe for turmoil in the future. They might still work at a smaller scale of an apartment complex but entire mono-cultural settlements could easily be polarised pockets simmering with radicalism and instability. Problems need not arise just from Jewish communities excluding Arabs but even other Jews from Haredi settlements, for example.

The Zionist project was undoubtedly secular, even atheistic perhaps, but it was not seen as hostile to Judaism, its raison d’etre, until recent intellectual developments. There is the obvious case to be made that the NSB is a backlash against the potential Progressive capture of state institutions before it is too late. Yet to call it a frontal assault on the secular nature of the Israeli state is to have too slavish a devotion to the European experience rather than the Jewish story.

An intriguing interpretation is presented by Eyal Benvenisti, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, and Doreen Lustig, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University, who argue that the fears surrounding the Nation-State Law must be tempered with other Basic Laws on Human Dignity and on Fair Employment. Furthermore, reading the Nation-State Law in conjunction with the February 2017 Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, it appears plausible that the Likud and its coalition partners are laying the groundwork for an inevitability they have realised – a Jewish Israel and an autonomous, Islamic Palestinian region as part of a single state.

The Western keening for Israeli democracy is at least puzzling if not downright hypocritical. Most established nations have used force to forge a national identity and protected it with the banal acts of everyday nationalism and immigration controls; the only difference is that Europe and the United States had achieved this a century ago while Israel is a newer nation. As waves of Muslim refugees threaten European shores, the backlash is already discernible in policies and voting patterns. Israel, though a Jewish state, lives with a multicultural population whose demographics threaten to weaken the core of its identity – an ipseity its people have been persecuted for over the centuries like no other. One cannot fault Israeli lawmakers for a passionate defence of their homeland’s essential Jewish character.

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Modern Political Shibboleths

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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When Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as a “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” in an October 1939 radio broadcast, the British prime minister might as well have been describing the future state of Israel. Outwardly European in many ways, the tiny Jewish state remains far closer socio-culturally to its Middle Eastern neighbours much like it plays football in Europe while sitting in Asia. Officially, Israel is a secular state although with interesting caveats that explicitly emphasise its Jewish identity. Similarly, the Jewish State is a democracy but more so for its Jewish citizens than others.

It is not as if these contradictions of the Middle East’s only functional democracy are new or were just noticed. Several factors contribute to the recent focus on the apparent weaknesses of the Israeli polity: the receding of the immediate, existential threats faced by the new state; the removal from power of the founding generation of socialist Zionists; and the growth of a segment of Israeli society that is more traditional and religious. An external source of alarm has been the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in America, whose numbers and financial contributions to community causes gives them a loud voice, that have felt increasingly alienated from the Jewish homeland as a result of its policies.

There is, however, no need to panic just yet unless, of course, we are hidebound by doctrinaire definitions of ideas. Israel’s intriguing strains of democracy, secularism, and identity are indeed correlative to the country’s history and socio-political circumstances but are not as unique as they are sometimes portrayed to be. In fact, Israeli politics falls well within the normal behavioural parameters of nations and states that are presently unfashionable thanks only to the vicissitudes of public politics.

Let us take the example of secularism in Israel. Although the state recognises Islam, the Druze, and Bahá’í as well as ten sects of Christianity apart from Judaism. Nonetheless, a menorah has the pride of place on the country’s sigil and the weekend falls on the Sabbath; government buildings are decorated for Hanukkah and the national anthem, the Hatikvah, is replete with Jewish motifs; public institutions such as El Al, the national airline, and the Israeli Defence Forces observe kashrut, and Hebrew, the language of Jewish scripture and the bearer of its culture, is the national language.

In essence, Israel is as secular as any liberal democracy. Whether it is France, the United States, or some other example, even liberal democracies cleave fiercely to their heritage, which, for historical reasons, has seen religion in a paramount position. Where Israel goes beyond other secular democracies is in its policing of the boundaries between religions. For example, the state allows Jews from anywhere in the world to return to the Holy Land and obtain citizenship without question. This, however, is not entirely remarkable because dozens of countries offer jus sanguinus citizenship and have leges sanguinus; Israel is not unique in this respect even though the ethnocentricism may be politically offensive to some.

Israel also officially recognises only Orthodox Judaism, and marriage, divorce, and inheritance is based on halakha. Marriage between the different denominations of Judaism are not recognised, nor are inter-faith marriages with Jews. However, the state accepts any marriage that occurs outside Israel’s borders and it is estimated that some 10 percent of marrying couples travel abroad, usually to Cyprus, for their big day.

These policies have come under fire from secular activists for fostering a strong presence of religion in Israeli public life and for being at odds with democratic principles. The Diaspora, a large portion of whom are Reform or Conservative, are also incensed with their official status in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate that considers them as sufficiently Jewish to make aliyah but not for religious purposes. The Knesset’s purpose for having such laws, however, is to maintain the Jewish character of the Israeli state the value of which is often forgotten in debates over abstract notions.

It is easy to overlook the necessity of a Jewish state, especially as outsiders. The world of academic discourse and international politics, albeit using a vocabulary of liberal pluralism, still bears a strong majoritarian accent of European historical experience. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, and as such, must bear the responsibility of preserving its ancient culture. Christian and Muslim states have the luxury of flirting with various social movements and ideologies and the sheer number of their sovereignties, not to mention the faithful masses, ensures that there remains a traditional core or anchor. On the other hand, Jews are more susceptible to attenuation through inter-faith marriage, conversion out of the fold, or atheism – a problem compounded by the fact that Judaism has stringent procedures for those who wish to embrace it.

Another necessity of a Jewish state is that there must always be a place that can serve as a safe haven for international Jewry. The fact remains that anti-Semitism still thrives the world over if with a little more discretion, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the brighter end of the spectrum, Emancipation removed any lingering doubts that Europe was first and foremost a Christian realm and Jews would perennially remain die Ewigen. The uglier face of the same phenomenon is the Shoah during World War II. It becomes incumbent upon Israel, as the world’s lone Jewish state, to defend that identity of its tribes that have made them such targets.

Israeli democracy can serve no role that is different from its secularism – it must be as inclusive and equitable as possible without in any way endangering the core identity upon which the state itself was demanded and built. Israel extends universal adult suffrage to all its citizens and does not bar any profession to certain faiths or ethnicities. There are non-Jewish members in the Knesset, the civil service, and even the military. Activists do, however, point to the discrimination in building permits and resource allocation between Jewish and Arab citizens. From the Israeli perspective, however, this has to do with retaining demographic control over the holy city of Jerusalem (and other religious sites in Judea and Samaria) and falls under the broad rubric of preserving the national heritage. Besides, Arabs had denied Jews access to their religious sites when the area was occupied by Muslims.

As abstractions, democracy and secularism are laudable principles perhaps. Yet the reality of Israeli circumstances demand that they serve only as beacons rather than absolute mandates. Much is made of Israel as an innovative country of startups and the technologically gifted. As true as that may be, the country also serves as an example for innovation in counter-terrorism, legal frameworks, and social policy to countries that do not enjoy the luxury of nearly monolithic cultures and live under constant threat.

By carping about the ostensible failures of Israeli democracy and secularism, critics appear devoted to how we might best serve these ideas rather than the more important question of how these ideas may best serve society. The Western one-size-fits-all model of development – be it material or social – clearly does not hold. Interestingly, the flow of immigrants from cultures that are substantially different from European and American societies has resulted in similar fissures in the West and has led to several leaders (David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy) announcing the death of multiculturalism. It is worth bearing in mind that Israel, on the other hand, has lived with these fissiparous tendencies since its inception.

As Israel celebrates its 70th year of existence, it is time to reflect on the trials and tribulations the tiny state has undergone in that period. Only the local context will inform us whether the Jewish state has succeeded in living up to its promise, not hoary theories of political systems.

Not a Mahatma, Just Mohandas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Book Review

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Kumaraswamy, PR. Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home. New Delhi: K W Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2017. 234 pp.

Mohandas Gandhi was a controversial figure. Admired by hundreds of millions, he is best known for his non-violent resistance to the British rule of India. In the aftermath of the British retreat from the subcontinent in August 1947 and his assassination five months later, Gandhi has become the subject of hagiographies and most of his other political beliefs have been obscured from public memory. One such issue is his position on the question of the creation of an independent Jewish state in the British mandate of Palestine. PR Kumaraswamy’s latest book, Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home brings this question to the fore at a most opportune time when India is reconsidering its relations with the Jewish state.

Those even vaguely familiar with Indo-Israeli relations are aware that Gandhi opposed the partition of Palestine in 1947. It has been widely assumed that this was because the Indian leader could not support the creation of a state along religious lines in Palestine while condemning the same in northwestern and eastern India. However, Gandhi’s view on the Jewish question was formed much before the demands for Pakistan became loud and later solidified out of ignorance, political expedience, and an ideological obduracy that emolliated only in his final years in the face of the horrors of World War II. Squaring the Circle is a most helpful effort that methodically compiles Gandhi’s exposure to Jews, Judaism, and Zionism from his South Africa days until the end of World War II. Kumaraswamy also makes the important distinction between Jews and Zionists – not all Jews were or are Zionists and the two spring from entirely different, some may say opposing, ideologies.

Zionism was a relatively new movement when Gandhi was in South Africa. Of course, the Jews had been praying ‘L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim‘ at Passover and Yom Kippur for over a millennium but the first aliyah in 1882 was almost a disaster; Jewish immigration to Israel was a trickle until the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. Gandhi had left South Africa for India in 1915. His Jewish friends – primarily the Lithuanian-born German Hermann Kallenbach and the English Henry Polak – were, unsurprisingly, not Zionists, at least at the time, and the Holy Land rarely cropped up in their conversations.

In fact, Gandhi’s entire understanding of Judaism came from Christianity and after he returned to India, Islam. While the Indian leader would eventually sympathise with the plight of the Jews throughout history, it was not without repeating sectarian calumnies against them. For example, in his infamous article titled The Jews in Harijan in 1938, Gandhi wrote, “Indeed, it is a stigma against them (that is, the Jews) that their ancestors crucified Christ.” In response to sharp criticism over the article, Gandhi asked, “Are they (the Jews) not supposed to believe in eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth?” confusing the Babylonian king Hammurabi who lived some eight centuries before the first kingdom of the Israelites was founded for the Jews.

Similarly, Gandhi was also influenced by Islamic portrayals of history and conceded that Palestine was Jazirat ul-Arab. Though the term technically refers to only the Arabian peninsula, Indians at the turn of the 20th century understood it to encompass Constantinople, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina – in essence, the complete domains of Islam in the Middle East. Kumaraswamy notes that several Indian leaders frequently used the term as synonymous with Dar ul-Islam. To see Palestine in this manner was to accept the classical Islamic claim that once a land is held by a Muslim force, it must forever be considered Islamic; the ancient Jewish – and pagan – presence in the land seems to hold no value for Gandhi. He had accepted and internalised the radical interpretations of Muslims figures like Maulana Abdul Bari and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari who quoted hadith demanding that “Christians, Jews, and idolaters be removed from Jazirat ul-Arab at all costs.”

Additionally, Gandhi’s rejection of Jewish claims on the Holy Land came while privileging Islamic claims – in all fairness, all three Abrahamic religions have some sort of claim on the region. This point was lost on the Indian leader altogether.

The Zionists made several overtures to India’s apostle of peace from September 1931 when Gandhi was in London for the Round Table Conference. The Zionists had noticed Gandhi’s stature among several notables in Europe and the United States and his support could prove influential in their own dealings with the Western powers. The results of the overtures are well known but Squaring the Circle contains a shocking revelation: several of the letters that were sent Gandhi by the Zionists were intercepted by his personal secretary, Pyarelal Nayyar, and destroyed. The secretary admitted to as much in an interview in the early 1970s, defending his deeds by arguing that the correspondence would have tarnished his master’s historical memory –  a sad commentary on how Indians approach history to this day.

India’s Hindu-Muslim politics made it difficult for Gandhi to develop a soft spot for Zionism if he did not have one already by the time he left South Africa, argues Kumaraswamy. However, if Venkat Dhulipala’s thesis in Creating a New Medina is to be believed, Gandhi either woefully misread the communal equations or stubbornly persisted with his own ideology. Gandhi’s absolute commitment to the Khilafat Movement, something even Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not keen on, bewildered even Arabs and Ottomans. For an anti-imperialist, Gandhi was remarkably considerate of the Ottoman Empire!

Gandhi’s reckless pursuit of an irrelevant (to India) Khilafat agenda constrained his options as competition between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League for the support of Indian Muslims spilled out into the open. The League was able to dictate the terms of the Palestine question and push Congress into positions it might not have taken otherwise. Squaring the Circle makes the fair observation that Gandhi might not have said more on Palestine had it not been repeatedly brought into Indian political discourse by relation to (British) imperialism, or the Congress’ tussle with the Muslim League. First manipulated by the (Shaukat and Mohammad) Ali brothers and later by Jinnah, it became politically difficult for Gandhi to take a softer stance on Zionism even if he had been so inclined.

Gandhi objected to Zionism for its violence against Arabs as well. Yet his views on ahimsa are not only a radical departure from Hindu scriptures but they have also never been practical. His suggestion to the Jews, for example, that they offer non-violent struggle against Adolf Hitler is not even worth a derisive laugh. Similarly, Gandhi condemned Jewish violence but remained silent on the several Arab riots that marred 1920s and 1930s mandatory Palestine even after the meetings between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseni, and the Nazi leadership had made Arab intentions ominously clear. While Gandhi stated that he did not support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine by force, he conveniently ignored the bloody history of Islamic conquests that left them in possession of that land.

Interestingly, Gandhi’s views on Zionism did change. Kumaraswamy draws attention to a nuanced shift in Gandhi’s views in the last few years of his life when Gandhi admitted to American journalist Louis Fischer from jail in 1942 that “the Jews have a good case… If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the jews have a prior claim.” This is a profound change from his views barely four years earlier. After World War II, Gandhi stopped objecting to a national Jewish home in Palestine but maintained his criticism of the violence perpetrated by the Irgun and Etzel. Kumaraswamy also brings to the fore Gandhi’s remark in the same infamous 1938 Harijan article that “if there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of, and for, humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a race, would be completely justified.” It is this commitment to the scholarly enterprise that makes Squaring the Circle a truly recommendable book.

Even in his realisation of the Jewish case, Gandhi ultimately falls short though less due to his failures this time. His suggestion of non-violence is obvious but even his comparison of Jewish ghettos in Nazi Europe to Indian ghettos in Transavaal indicates that he did not fully comprehend the atrocities the Jews had just been subjected to; however, it was not until late 1945 that news of the Endlösung would spread outside Europe. Kumaraswamy objects to Gandhi’s equating Nazi Germany with imperial Britain but Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts makes a compelling case to the contrary, not to mention Madhusree Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War.

It is a pleasure to read how Kumaraswamy has dealt with a complex issue with several variables and shades of meaning with nuance and confidence in Squaring the Circle. The book is especially relevant now when India has moved from a passive recognition of Israel in 1950 to the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992 and is now considering a firmer embrace under the Narendra Modi government. For too long has Gandhi been the foil of those who wished to see a moral case in India’s support of Palestine; Kumaraswamy’s research makes that position no longer tenable.

The exemplary use of primary and secondary sources has resulted in a rare occurrence in the historical craft where a book might be said to be truly definitive on a subject. Though there are always a few tantalising strands that could be further explored – why the Zionists cared so much about winning Gandhi to their cause, for example – Kumaraswamy has stayed true to his topic of Gandhi’s thoughts on the Palestinian question.

Squaring the Circle forces us to step away from the simplistic binaries of pro- and anti- Zionism/Arabs to consider the historical circumstances that shaped Gandhi’s views. They were largely formed from incomplete or erroneous information and shaped by political exigencies of Indian politics. Yet Gandhi was honest and bold enough to make small yet significant concessions in his position on Zionism and Palestine in the last five years of his life. The real question is if Indians, who are so used to interpreting their historical figures in absolute binaries, can accommodate Gandhi’s complete thoughts on Israel into their historical narrative. Perhaps some might even be bold enough to wonder why Gandhi’s views from 70 years ago must still shape India’s destiny. Regardless, for those interested in India’s relations with Israel and Palestine, Kumaraswamy’s Squaring the Circle is an indispensable read.