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The Civic Identity of my Outgroup.
Recently, Melanie Phillips, a jewish zionist conservative journalist and British media personality, wrote a post on X that raised some eyebrows:
As can be seen in the link, she was replying to small time Scottish comedian and media personality Leo Kearse, who is also a self avowed zionist, but a 'zionist' for British people as well. Who tried to make equivocations between British and jewish identity which Melanie rejects.
There's a lot to unpack here. The Principal disagreement rest on the idea that the British should defend their civic identity, but, for some reason, not their ethnic one. American Dissident Right wing personality Dave Greene got to the heart of the matter:
Even if taken as a simple matter of fact, Melanie Phillips is obviously just wrong, as British nationalist and media personality Connor Tomlinson pointed out:
So what is going on here? Why did she write what she did? It's not a matter of political fairness, like Dave Greene posited. Since this is obviously not fair. Nor is it a matter of factual categorical accuracy, like Connor Tomlinson noted.
The immediate answer is that Melanie Phillips is expressing her views earnestly as a jewish supremacist. She genuinely can not feel the emotional pull in her heart towards other identity groups as to when it comes to the jews. It does not emotionally intuit for her. She's simply honest in verbalizing her emotional state when faced with the concept of venerating a groups sanctity and integrity when that group is jewish and when a group is not jewish. To her they are simply not the same.
To that extent there's not much to take issue with. Zionism to Melanie is not nationalism. Zionism represents nationalism for one nation only. Within the zionist worldview there are no other valid nations than the jewish one. Every other identity is lesser or simply not a thing. That's genuinely what those like Melanie feel. That's why the holocaust is the most important and not the tens of millions of Russians who died, or why Israel has a special status before any other nation on earth, or why the jewish people are the most distinct despite being a hodgepodge of ethnicities more genetically diverse than the entirety of Europe. These are all verbal qualifiers empty of meaning or content outside of the emotions felt by those who express them.
What's less clear is why that is the case. Why does zionism not represent itself as the pan-nationalist identitarian movements in Europe? You have these right wing politicians and media personalities falling over themselves to praise zionism and Israel, but when the time comes for the zionist to scratch back, they don't. And it's genuinely bizarre. Because the insult here is far graver than what any mealy mouthed opposition to 'the left' can make up for.
The implication behind every oppositional argument to 'the left' from a point of view that's not explicitly nationalistic in the same way that right wing jews are zionistic, is that you don't have a right to exist. An implicit recognition of the fact that they don't believe that your identity, your family and your nation is valid. This is doubly highlighted by media personalities who stand on identitarian business for Israel, but make platonic arguments for everyone else. Ben Shapiro's famous 'I don't care about the browning of America' continues to echo throughout time.
The buck has to stop here. It's not possible to maintain anything else. Zionism is not just nationalism for the jews. It's not even Nazism for the jews. It's beyond that. In fact it would be safe to say that there is hardly a difference between how a zionist views non-jewish nations and how a radical open borders leftist views non-jewish nations. These aren't nations to them at all. To conceptualize of them in such a way just isn't valid. They are simply economic zones to be managed. Creedal nations. Ideas to be played with.
With all that said, ostensibly nationalistic people like Leo Kearse who think zionists are a natural ally are simply wrong.
I don't have a single Antisemitic bone in my body, and I generally avoid discussions that are entirely premised on Jews being up to no good and serving in-group interests at the expense of the outgroup. Too much heat, not enough light.
But I do in fact 'notice' this tendency among some Jews to waffle between the Religious, Ethnic, and National identities to whichever is advantageous for their immediate argument. Plus the tendency of some Jews to also flag as "white" when that might help too. I suppose you could define an ideological group too, but I couldn't do so here.
As far as I know they're the only cognizable group on the planet that can claim all three at once. Maybe some Native Americans can pull something similar. In the U.S. this means they can invoke the 1st amendment right to freedom of religion where needed, the Civil Rights Act defenses against discrimination by race... AND in their back pocket they can cite the good of their country and preservation thereof as a justification for certain actions or beliefs that aren't otherwise protected. ("Israel has a right to defend itself!"™)
The "Big Trouble in Little Palestine" affair (damn it seems like ages ago, but when it was happening it felt like it would never end) kind of brought this to a head for me. Lot of Jews claiming abject fear for their lives (rightfully, I add, there was a spate of attacks/murders) and claiming this creates a nigh-plenary justification to crack down on anti-Zionist activities in any Western Country as well, since Jews (ethnicity) are targets regardless of their national identity. And yeah, some of that anti-Zionist activity was actually dangerous and it was good to crack down on it... but not because it was targeted at Jews.
And then using the identifiable danger to the ethnicity to also push for specific special protections for Jews (religion) on top of it.
So I say hang on a second. Their country was attacked, that's for sure. And I validate their right to respond, even if I question the means by which they do so. But now they're suggesting that their ethnic and religious identity is the actual target of attack, then pushing that as grounds to take actions in countries that were otherwise uninvolved in the conflict.
I feel like they're asking for special treatment on the basis of their race and religion, but justifying it by ties to the nation that was attacked, without openly fleshing out the leap in logic... because again its a distinction that is advantageous to keep ambiguous. There are anti-Zionist Jews, non-practicing Jews, and even ethnic Jews who convert to different religions and end up disclaiming their heritage. Are those groups threatened?
Anyhow. Clearly there is a religion labelled Judaism that has many observant practitioners. Clearly there is an ethnic group, identifiable in genealogical records, known as "Jews" that have a long and storied history. And more recently, clearly there is a 'Jewish state' that has defined boundaries (I realize that by uttering that I'm invoking a frenzied controversy). The 'people' encompassed by each is basically four concentric, mostly-overlapping circles, with Jewish religion being the largest, then ethnic Jews, then Israeli nationalists (including the 'informal' ones who consider it their homeland and birthright even if lacking citizenship) then formal Israeli citizens.
But when talking about Jewish identity, the distinction between these is often elided and muddies the issue. Thus its fairly convenient to invoke an attack against Israel, which technically represents a minority of actual practicing/ethnic Jews as an attack on Jews everywhere, without truly clarifying whether the attack is motivated by anger/opposition to the Israeli state, or racial hatred against ethnic Jews, or, call it 'religious rivalry.'
So to bring this home, I don't mind if you want to claim Jewish identity is 'special' and that you're justifying some action or belief on that basis. Just please state which facet of that identity you're actually invoking, rather than leaving me to guess. And once we've established which it is, don't vociferously object to others invoking that facet of their identity too. If Britain has a national/civic identity, they can invoke that if "Britain" is attacked. We have some overlap between the British 'state' and the ethnicities that historically populated the isles and surrounding areas, and I can trace that genealogically! So an attack on native Britons is an attack on 50% of my identity too (as per Ancestry.com), and I should be able to feel a certain way about that. And British Christians, likewise should be able to claim that an attack against Christendom is an attack on their identity too.
(I'm realizing now this seems analogous to my issues with women claiming, simultaneously, the right to be considered fully empowered individuals, but also an oppressed group in need of special legal protection, and where convenient as helpless little girls who cannot be held accountable for their actions.)
I mean, all those things can be true? Their country was attacked largely because of ethnic/religious identity, and many of the attacks "on zionists" are due to ethnic/religious identity. If there were multiple Jewish-majority nations, perhaps it would be easier to distinguish, but that's not the case.
Sure.
Which one(s), specifically, are the Israelis claiming that Hamas was motivated by, and how does that compare to the stated motivation of Hamas themselves?
My understanding is that the occupation of the West Bank and oppression of Gaza is the most explicit and universal casus belli on the Palestinian side of the conflict. This seems to me far removed from the religious practices of Jews being at odds with those of Islam.
I really do read most of the conflict in that zone as motivated directly by the desire to control the specific territory, rather than a deep-seated racial animus (although that's certainly been building among the inhabitants of the region) or an inherent need to slay the nonbelievers. I see the additional religion and race elements as intentional motivators to keep up the fight over the territory, since you want your fighters to believe its an existential conflict. I'm not so sure this conflict would persist if Israel were to cede the contested zones entirely.
I mean help me out here, even in the Muslim Ottoman Empire days the Jews were not targets for elimination on racial or religious grounds!
This is a direct quote:
Presumably any religious supremacy elements to the feud are even more recent than that???
Like literally the Jews wanted a homeland badly enough to start fighting off the other nations in their newly formed country's vicinity and lord bless them, they won, repeatedly. THAT is a sufficient explanation for why they created so many enemies in a short period of time, and historically speaking, competing claims on 'valued' territory is maybe the single biggest cause of war we know of?
The contested zones that the hardline Palestinians want them to concede is all of Israel Palestine from the river to the sea. Surely the Jews of Israel earn themselves no favor from the Palestinians with their flagrant abuses in the west bank but approximately no one in the region actually wants a two state solution.
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It's kind of both.
Palestinians believe Israelis have no right to be there and the land is theirs. So yes, it is a desire to control the territory, and it's not as if they would spare the Muslim or Christian Israelis should they somehow gain the ability to sweep them into the sea.
But Muslims in general, well before the Zionists first arrived in the Holy Land, have always had a negative attitude towards Jews (yes, the Quran says they are "People of the Book" but the Quran also has lots of passages about how nicely you're supposed to treat your wives, and, well) and Islam is a militant religion that does not accept the presence of non-believers except in a barely-tolerated, clearly subordinate position.
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I'm not a representative of Israel, but I am pretty sure Israel would claim that it's Jew hatred.
This is apparently from the original Hamas charter:
Of course, anyone can say anything about their motivations, and people (obviously) have a strong tendency to engage in whitewashing when describing their motivations. It's pretty likely that if you asked Hamas leadership today about their motivations, they would insist it's just about "fighting Zionism."
But consider that (1) Egypt occupied Gaza for many years; and (2) Egypt blockaded Gaza for many years up to and including the present day. What did the Palestinian Arabs do to resist this "occupation"? Practically nothing. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, back in the day the PLO issued a statement to the effect that it was not contesting Egyptian control of Gaza or Jordanian control of J+S.
The phrase "targets for elimination" seems oddly worded to me. As if the person who wrote that phrase is trying to create a misleading impression. Do you believe that there was significant religious persecution of Jews in the Ottoman Empire?
Can we agree that there were significant attacks against the Jews in the area before 1948? Can we agree that numerous Arab countries formally declared war on Israel before being defeated in the 1948 war? It seems to me that if you include this context, it appears that the Arabs created themselves as enemies before being defeated in the 1948 war.
Ahhhh but you're doing the thing.
Is it hatred of Israeli Jews specifically? Or Jews as an ethnic group? Or hatred for Judaism itself and its practitioners?
"Jew Hatred" is under-specified as a motive due to the ambiguity!
I see strong evidence for the first, and much less for the third.
"Significant" to where there are notable instances of persecution in the historical record?
Absolutely.
Significant to where Jews were ever at even a theoretical risk of being wiped out? Nah. I think Germany takes the cake there.
Not to say that full on genocide is the only bad thing that can happen to a people, I'm just pointing out how much lower down the aggression meter things were for a long time, which you would not expect if Islam and Judaism were mortal enemies the entire time. The Hatfields and McCoys had a deeper blood feud going on than Arabs and Jews did during that period.
Its literally centuries of general co-existence under Ottoman rule, (so not co-equal existence) with spates of violence, then a turning point somewhere in the 19th century. And around 1890 Zionism actually emerges as a cohesive movement, which, at the time, was religiously motivated but as far as I can find has not defined Islam or the Arab world as enemies.
I think we can. I'm just going off the point that this seems like a turf war more than a religious war at its core.
Not precluding that it would become a religious war, but the animosity was not centered on their competing religious beliefs. Indeed, as I understand Islam the Jews are recognized as a historically significant and distinct group, and Islam's theological precursor, so the Arab nations had to do a lot of rejiggering to make them a valid religious target and enemy (indeed getting into the theories about Israelis not being the original Jewish people).
So anyhow, I am accepting that Jewish ethnic and religious identity are entangled with the Jewish state. But I am not accepting the facial assertion that an an act of war/aggression on Israel implies hatred for all ethnic Jews or even a form of religious rivalry.
I have not seen the articulated chain of logic from "Israeli Civilians were viciously kidnapped/tortured/murdered" to "(ethnic) Jews everywhere are in danger" to "therefore every allied government must enact policies to protect (all) Jews in their territories."
Or more bluntly, if (religious/ethnic) Jews are citizens of the United States, residing in the U.S., I already agree it is the U.S. government's job to protect them... because they're citizens. I do not have to accept that their co-ethnics getting murdered in Israel is grounds for policy change in the U.S.
But (religious/ethnic) Jews in the U.S. will hammer their ethnic connection to Israelis AND their religious connection to American Christians to channel the assertion that an attack on Israel is a direct attack on American Jews too and necessitates American action to protect all Jews as a class.
I am not certain those credits transfer.
But IF those credits do transfer... as mentioned, I think I can likewise take growing levels of unrest and violence against native Britons, with whom I share ethnic and religious heritage, as a personal threat to my life and interests and demand similar special protection?
"Yes, I am an American Citizen who has never been to Europe, but I see British people, in Britain, brutally victimized due to apparent racial and religious hatred. I am racially and religiously entwined with those people, therefore I, too, am in danger."
On the face of it I don't follow that logic. Swap it out:
"Yes I am an American Citizen who has never been to Israel, but I see Jewish people, in Israel, brutally victimized due to apparent racial and religious hatred. I am racially and religiously entwined with those people therefore I, too, am in danger."
And I still don't follow the logic.
I can sense now that someone will try and say "But Jews ARE really in a different situation!" and hokay, please explain why without exploiting that ambiguity between Judaism, Ethnic Jewish heritage, and Isreali citizenship.
As with Christianity, it can be complicated.
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