I cite the example of Levi to you because it shows that precisely from within the moral framework derived from the Holocaust, an opposition to the Israeli state is not only possible, but necessary. This thought is nearly unthinkable within American Judaism or, indeed, from within the progressive Jewish movements who call for the end of the occupation. And until we can unlink the way in which the Nazi genocide continues to act as a permanent justification for this state and its policies, there will be a silencing of dissent, a muting of public criticism. Levi himself claimed that we must not let the sufferings of the Jews under Nazism "justify everything." (Butler)
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I am going to disagree and I am going to go out on limb here as a non-Jew, based on what I've read of Leo Strauss and his early Zionist writings and his associations in the 20s. As a preface, I've tried to consider what Hannah Arendt meant when she said that Zionism was Germany's gift to the Jews. While this was a very wretched and bitter comment, I think it encapsulated a profound political insight.
What makes the Zionist writings of the 20s that I've read, which included many others besides Strauss, important is that they occur before the Nazis power grab of Germany (and obviously the extermination camps) and before the state of Israel. And yet these writings and reflections form part of the philosophical-political basis for both subsequent events: extermination and state.
Early Zionist writings highlight something that is extraordinarily difficult to understand, which is that both Zionists and the Nazis in the 20s-30s shared a profoundly similar impulse, a loathing of the very concept of assimilation. While Zionists and Nazis followed a dialectic of pure enmity toward one another, they also agreed the lowest form of human life was the assimilated Jew---an alien species in both national peoples, Germans and Jews. Thus the two enemies also agreed that the core weakness of the Weimar Republic was its liberalism of tolerance and acceptance, the very political process that justified assimilation and made it both possible and habitable..
So then, after WWII this dialectic of purity or anti-assimilation evolved into what we now see as a dialectic of death or state. The same loathing of assimilation is still present and still occupies some central justification to Israelis government actions. This is certainly true in its policies toward Israelis Arabs, but these loathings are also extended to include Jews living outside Israel. Or to put it in the positive, Jews are only truly Jews who live in Israel. Or to put it more bluntly, Israel speaks for Jews--the disappearance of the state of Israel as it is now constituted is equivalent to the disappearance of Jews.
What the Nazis genocide proved, beyond all doubt was exactly what Zionism insisted on in the first place. Assimilation was impossible. This idea, transformed into the current historical context now reads, there are no real Jews outside Israel. For current US propaganda purposes this idea is moderated to say that there are no real Jews who do not also support Israel.
The conclusion that I drew from reading this history in the 20s is that Zionism and Nazism co-evolved as national identity movements in which the death factories and the state of Israel are two concrete answers to the same `Jewish Question'. Therefore the core link between Nazis extermination and Zionist state is anti-Assimilation, not anti-Semiticism.
Now before anyone argues that this is putting the cart before the horse, consider that Zionists, Nazis, and anti-Semites all agree that assimulation is not an option. Therefore what unifies them is this agreement.
This is not a nice conclusion. To my mind it is a horrible conclusion, because it condemns Israel forever, or for at least as long as Israel insists it is a Zionist state. Further, this conclusion makes it impossible for Israel to ever be a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural state. And yet, the historical-cultural reality of the region literally back to Ur was and is precisely its multiplicity of peoples, cultures and languages. So Israel is locked in a forever war against its own current and historical realities. As a state apparatus the only way out of endless war is for Israel is to become what it was founded against: a state of and for assimilated peoples. That is, a liberal and tolerant society that shares power and rights among its own diverse peoples, cultures, and languages---who in turn agree to be assimilated into a political secular state as a single national body. In other words, a modern democratic state in a pluralist world.
Butler writes:
``Coalitions are not easy or happy places. They are places one stays when one has the impulse to leave. They are forms of work that are, by definition, difficult, since one has to have one's position and allow it to be decentered by what one hears. One must persist in what one knows to be right, and yet know also when to yield, when to do something for the sake of continuing to work together, to preserve the relations at hand.... This would mean living to the side of one's nationalism, of one's identification, allowing for a decentering of a nationalist ethos. The question of establishing and tending to relations will be more important than grounding oneself in an identity....''
Well, yes, exactly. Other than my obscure and probably controversial note about understanding the central importance of anti-Assimilationism rather than anti-Semiticism, I agree entirely with Butler.
At some point it would interesting to read what she had to say about some of the 20s Zionist tracts I've been reading. Or better, I would prefer to read how Butler would analyze Leo Strauss. My stomach and heart for that job is giving out.
Chuck Grimes