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A short introduction to Liberal Zionist rhetoric, and why they usually just keep quiet.
A day ago a very interesting interview between Krystal Ball and Rep. Adam Smith took place. The topic of contention was Israel.
tl;dr: Openly defending Israel as a jewish ethnostate is OK as a democrat.
The interview starts off cordial enough. Adam establishes himself as the typical neo-liberal everyman who can sympathize with the plight of the downtrodden AND the military industrial complex (What a guy!) whilst Krystal fronts the now typical faux radical left 'not everyone in the DSA is insane, actually. At least I'm not' media personality that goes hard on the issues that pull on the heart strings.
Where things go south unexpectedly is around the 11:30 mark. Krystal compliments Adam on his recent strong voting pattern against aid to Israel, specifically the Thomas Massie amendment, and asks him to explain his thought process and change of heart. Adam waffles on a bit about his opposition to the Netanyahu government, a typical Liberal Zionist talking point, but then suddenly veers off the rails:
This is not out of context, this is the argument. Yes, Liberal Zionists are democrats. Yes, they are against the Netanyahu government. Yes, they believe in the concept of Israel as an explicit ethnostate. He believes it is not possible for Palestinians to represent jews in Israel. Two ethnic groups can not coexist. They are definitionally in a zero sum game of survival. That's the establishment democrat Liberal Zionist view for jews in Israel.
Understandably, Krystal catches on to this
Neo NaziZionist talking point that's somehow found its way into her otherwise progressive liberal leftist studio:Adam replies, a little more flustered than before:
Mein Kamerad... Krystal replies:
To which Adam retorts:
Which is the extent of his argumentation that isn't a soft recital of the many permutations of ethno nationalism argued for on the old /r/AltRight, RIP.
Krystal, to her credit as a host, tries to segue this into something else and asks why the US taxpayer should care about a jewish ethno supremacist project in the middle East, which Mike Huckabee would have been happy to answer. But Adam can't really seek refugee in the Scofield Bible so he doubles down on
Neo NazismZionism for jews:Well OK.
To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else? Why doesn't the magic freedom dirt in Israel transform your third worlders into engineers and scientists like it allegedly does everywhere else in the west, who would be just as jewish as anyone else in a few years. How is it possible to represent anything the Democrats have represented the world over and then believe this for Israel in the back of your brain?
Adam arrived to this interview ready to earnestly make the point that ethnonationalism is good for jews. He wanted to say this and he did. And I get it. Because he's not wrong. It's just that he believes it's wrong for everyone else. Most Liberal Zionists must understand that this contradiction is impossible to defend, which is probably why they don't talk about it at all. Hell, I'm starting to believe they can't even conceive of it. The Dual Morality is so strong it probably doesn't even register as a contradiction. But to hear it from the horses mouth is flabbergasting.
Genuinely surprised that we never got a Metal Gear character with this name.
Anyway, I’m not really seeing the problem here. I don’t like an ethnostate. I think that claiming Israel is one but Palestine wouldn’t be is misguided at best. Therefore, I’m sympathetic to people who rank the current situation over the palette-swapped version. That seems to be Smith’s position.
Mind the usual motte-and-bailey about Israel though, with the motte being "Israelis have as much right to fight for their existence as everyone else, the alternative would be worse in every respect" and the bailey being "we have to provide Israel with unconditional material and political support". If the anti-Israel position were actually as extreme as it is being strawmanned, it would not stop at cutting support to Israel and maybe threatening to arrest Bibi if he comes to a Western country again; instead it would demand that the US and Europe redirect all those piles of money, intel and ordnance to Hamas, which is so far out of the Overton window that it doesn't even work as satire.
Which or whose anti-Israel position stops at cutting support, the Liberal Jew's position?
The Liberal Jew adopts this position as a matter washing our hands for moral hygiene. The Liberal Jew believes the avatar of Bibi can soak up all the animosity, pass out of view eventually, and with cessation of a few billion dollars of aid the Liberal Jew's coalitional partners will be satiated. The Liberal Jew can hold the line there, surely. Of course this is not how politics works. At least, I don't see a good reason why that is realistic expectation here. If America can detach politically, cease 4 billions dollars a year in military aid, then the other positions will push onward. These are more aggressive methods of moral hygiene.
The Liberal Jew can declare the matter settled until the cows come home, but he will still be flanked by Radical Jews and Global South aficionados on the upswing within the Liberal Jew's own coalition and social circles. Few advocate for arming Hamas, that is true, but they clearly want to advance towards divestment, sanctions, and imposed isolation. They want to Rhodesia Israel. This, I think, is not particularly controversial. The Liberal Jew hopes to budge Overton only a little until all these unpleasant reactionaries are out of power in the Holy Land, but the reactionaries are in power for reasons that do not seem to be changing, and the anti-Israel position/project has greater ambition or greater animosity even if they were change.
It's my position, it's pretty common among the politically engaged in my immediate environment, and I'm neither Jewish nor particularly interested in how Israel conducts itself internally as long as I don't have to be the one pushing the fat man off the bridge (there are plenty of other places in the world where people are routinely barbaric to each other and I'm equally comfortable leaving those to their own devices).
I do think your entire post registers as a less-than healthy degree of straight up projection, because you are painting this strangely elaborate and unhinged picture of your opposition as being obsessed with the minutiae of Israel's fate and situation when in reality it is clear that it is clear that nobody cares more than you do. A stalker may take the long list of incidents that you compiled to submit to police as evidence that you really do love them back, but in reality you will most likely be overjoyed to not have to spend a sliver of attention on them again once the restraining order goes through; likewise, here in the broadly anti crowd we have been forced to pay attention after decades of money extraction, conflict spillover and unsolicited interference with civic and political life, but outside of a few obsessives I really think that most people (here in Europe! I gather the US has the whole Protestant millenarian thing going on, so sometimes the stalkee really does love the stalker back?) would be quite happy to forget that the place even exists.
I am not obsessed with the minutiae of Liberal Jews, their political sentiments, or Israel's fate. I think my picture was more general than elaborate and I didn't disparage any of the groups mentioned to be seen as worthy of your stalker analogy. "Global South aficionados" could be considered pejorative, but no it is a real descriptor with real political force in the US and on the international level. As an American, I think your
impliedposition is a perfectly fine one. A new configuration of US-Israeli relations which includes certain measures of decoupling to act more like relations with Saudi Arabia or the Philippines is a fine, defensible position to have. I don't find it offensive at all I just don't have any mistaken belief on the consequences somehow stopping conflict in your or anyone else's head. What does your country do for Israel that is so offensive? Are Liberal Jews a political force in your nation as they are in the US?Nonsense. People that want apathy can reach up today and grab it. Most people do. There has been and will be a genocide, bombing, intifada, or a new settlement to look forward to. There are entities and systems around the world that work to ensure you can't simply forget, including the Israeli government, and none of them are beholden to the constraints of your perfectly fine, defensible position. If your moral standards are met once once the US announces Israel must pay for all its bombs like anyone else and US-Israeli military cooperation is shoved into the dark, I predict you're going to be disappointed the noise doesn't end. If your standards dictate something more, then we're talking about something more than a normalized relationship between the US (or your nation) and Israel, aren't we? What might that be?
The only way you're not going to hear about Israel is if you decide to stop reading the news or a genocide is actually completed.
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