Decolonizing and Colonizing Judea

A certain kind of Hasbarist campaign talking point has gained prominence, in an effort to portray Zionism not as a colonial movement but as a decolonization or land-back movement. In this view, Zionists find common cause by viewing themselves as dispossessed Native American tribes: Just as the latter request their land back from the White Anglo imperialists which infringed and dispossessed them from their tranquil and traditional way of life, the Jews are also requesting - and have succeeded - in restoring their lands from Arab imperialism - the imposition of Islam and Arab supremacy and domination.

As a corollary to this viewpoint, Israel is actually not doing a white supremacy raysism because ‘over half of its population’ consists of Mizrahi Jews, plus Ethiopians and other immigrants which aren’t White. There is an inherent value in being brown - a simpler, more quaint and innocent existence; lacking the technological sophistication and the scheming western machiavellianism, they retain no expansionist goals, and no desire to impose systems of discrimination and hegemony on others.

A third point to which these Hasbarists like to appeal is the expulsion of Jews from other MENA countries - as well as their historical mistreatment under Islamic regimes. In this sense, the Arabs have no moral right to protest the existence of Israel and Zionism, because they themselves have provoked its resurgence by mistreating their Jewish minorities. The subtext here somehow implies that Zionism would not be necessary were Jews treated a bit nicer in their Islamic host countries. If only the helpless (brown) Jews would not have been mistreated, they would have most certainly lived in peace and prosperity with their (likewise brown) Muslim neighbors.

Intermixed in this Decolonizing Judea movement are images of Mizrahi Jews displaying ‘authentic’ Middle Eastern traditions and customs - the images of the sudra, a mimouna, or anything else which sounds exotic and oriental. These traditions are old, they are sacred, and they represent time-tested authenticity and sagacity. These are not like the hybridized and modernized European customs which are necessarily a product of industrialization and imperialism, but something brought forth and originated from the very region itself, ex nihilo.

These approaches, while perhaps well-intentioned, are fundamentally left coded and are doomed to fail. They seem fake. This isn’t to say that the Hasbarist talking points are factually false (though one might debate their accuracy), but it places Zionism in a defensive rather than offensive position. It places us in rhetorical positions which we shouldn’t actually be required to address: What if we actually had conquered land? Is that a bad thing? Is it bad to be a White country? If the Islamic countries hadn’t persecuted their Jews, would Israel’s existence not be justified? If Israel’s aesthetics and customs weren’t le traditional mena, does that negate its moral right to exist?

The decolonizing Judea and all the other leftist-ish Hasbarist talking points are utterly ineffective in convincing the global left to support the Zionist cause, while scaring away our true civilizational partners, the various right-wing movements in the West. Do right wing movements really want to support gay Tel Aviv or the diverse IDF? Most likely not.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Judaism - Essential Elements of the Left

The international global left, even when not explicitly anti-Zionist, opposes all the ideals that the State of Israel represents currently and historically. The Left opposes national history, national pride, military victory, religious considerations, and any kind of tribalism in general. While the traditional left preferred to see things through the lens of class struggle - as did (some) early labor Zionists, the modern left has deemphasized the notion of economic class struggle, and now sees the racial-political struggle and the eradication of ‘bourgeoise ideologies’ as a prerequisite to the liberation and enfranchisement of the global proletariat.

The left has no sympathy for the Jewish people as a historical nation with its own customs and traditions. The left never truly cared (nor does it continue to care) for historical group self-identity, except as a means to bring about its own ends through dialectical warfare. When Jews garnered sympathy among leftist causes in the 19th and 20th century, it was not out of an admiration of Jewish traditions and the dream of seeing an empowered Jewish nation, but of seeing Jewish conditions in the ghetto, decrepit, in poverty, lacking education and in general being seen negatively in the eyes of the non-Jewish population - making Jews as a cause celebre and the ethnic face of economic and political disenfranchisement. However, Jewish tradition and History taken in its literal sense drew nothing but disdain from Leftists; who saw the potential emancipation of the Jewish people and their eventual assimilation into European society as the means by which to completely eliminate their tribal and superstitious way of life as well as their abandonment of historical national myths.

Liberalism was also quite happy to include Jews into their national projects, but as emancipated individual citizens free to practice their traditions, and not as newly empowered social blocs. Overall, the toleration for Jewish presence in Western and European societies only (understandably) reached the extent to which Jews would be perceived to assimilate as productive citizens and not form an independent political force which would oppose the very principles they sought to uphold. Religious Jews tended to prefer their communal autonomy at the expense of and political economic disadvantage precisely because they saw the threat to their own value system if they were exposed to European society at large. Jews, seeing that their own religious system - just by means of communal isolation (no intermarriage, for example) would have received a lesser standing, even if only implicitly, would have been under the incentive to convert or shed their Judaism.

Left-Liberal Progressive Humanitarianism

The events of WWII put the Jewish Question on hold, at least temporarily, and the postwar division between US-dominated and Soviet-dominated spheres of influence resulted in a merging of ideological trends, resulting in a kind of progressive humanitarian liberalism in the west, sometimes oriented along racial lines. The traumatized Western world was extremely reticent to place any kind of assimilationist pressure on any ethnic or racial minorities, and instead placed ideological focus on increasing ‘freedom’ for all peoples, while resisting Soviet ‘authoritarianism’. Diaspora Jews were enthusiastically involved in this movement, both because of their general liberal-progressive tendencies, and because they had general interest to dissuade themselves from any nationalist movements which could quickly turn against them.

The Jewish support for anti-nationalist and pro-humanitarian tendencies, in addition to Liberalism (the Jews’ favorite ideology) being allied with those movements led to a fairly simple political choice of supporting this general ideological trend. Jews naturally adopted anti-racist positions and were generally supportive of international anti-colonialist independence movements in general - out of a dedication of advancing global liberalism and curbing nationalism, rather than any commitment to a grievance-based ideological leftism. But this Jewish support (and more generally, broader western support) for these movements were unique in that they came from a place of social and cultural distance in respect to the peoples they sought to emancipate (similar to the northern abolitionist movements in the US).

But with increasing social friction between social classes, and increased media visibility into global conflicts, it becomes ever more challenging to perceive ‘oppressed classes’ - previously at a distance - as noble savages; what remains is the more sensible view, of just being savages, but lacking the imagined charm and nobility. The liberal-humanitarian-progressive axis is losing its ideological sway, while the grievance-based Left must resort to increasingly complex systemic and intellectual abstractions to arouse sympathy for their own causes. The poor are no longer in need of uplifting and increased economic opportunities, but rather the rich must be disempowered and dispossessed from their wealth. Racial minorities no longer merely need to be free of discrimination and be granted equal access to the economy, but rather must rise up and wage identitarian-based battles of empowerment and liberation against an oppressive system.

Hasbarist Ideological Genealogy

Israel provides an interesting case study for these ideological trends. It is neither explicitly a European colonial power (because of the historical dissociation of Jews from the European White Christian majority), and thus cannot entirely be viewed as an oppressor; yet on the other hand, Israel’s clear economic, industrial, and military successes have definitively precluded it from being seen as purely an oppressed, disenfranchised, and disadvantaged class.

Historically, Hasbarists have intended to keep itself above the Western political discourse; appealing to the hardships experienced by Jews in WW2, the military challenges faced by Israel from its neighbors, and the economic successes and industrial progression of the country. These were all historically non-controversial stances in the west across most of the political spectrum. Americans themselves for the most part used the positioning of American Jews as a reference point for Israel, essentially imagining the two populations to be largely in sync politically as well as culturally. Like Israel, American Jews faced several hardships (from their time in Europe) and largely managed to become very successful and industrious in the US, living in peace and prosperity with their non-Jewish neighbors.

Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s - and up to the late 2000s, Israel’s conflicts were not perceived to be with the Palestinian Arab population, but rather with neighboring Arab states and Palestinian ‘extremism’. This perception was strengthened by the outbreak of several actual conventional wars in those decades, and combined with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and finally culminating with the Iraq war. This perception was also strengthened by the general early support of US’ own most highly visible ethnic minority - Blacks. Black leaders in the 50s and 60s generally were supportive of the Zionist cause, trying to find parallels between the Jewish History and their own - as enslaved peoples who were seeking liberation and self-determination. In short, the story of Israel largely appealed to all segments of the American public and all orientations of American politics. This is not to say that Israel always got its way, or that people at times didn’t have a negative opinion of Israel; yet in general, the support for Israel existing as a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state was widespread. To criticize Israel as a state itself was to be explicitly antisemitic and to be antisemitic was to be anathemized from polite political discussion.

But much of this balance no longer holds true today due a variety of factors. The failure of the Iraq war - a war largely perceived to have been encouraged by Israel (and “for Israel”) turned public opinion against foreign interventions in the middle east - both politically and militarily. Increased discourse about racial disparities and advocacy for leftist perspectives on racial struggle and emancipation meant that the economically successful and well-integrated Jews started having less and less in common with Blacks, with Blacks feeling increased resentment towards Whites - and Jews - who they essentially view as ‘super whites’, and Jews increasingly perplexed at why Blacks couldn’t take advantage of the economic and civic freedoms which were offered to them by the numerous legal and cultural victories of the 1960s. Certainly some Jews did continue fighting in favor of Black interests, but the broad majority had taken a largely passive role in this respect, implicitly acknowledging it as a lost cause while at the same time being very careful to not become overtly (or even implicitly) racist. Finally, increased immigration from countries and cultures which were either neutral-negative to Jews (such as Hispanics, who do not carry the post-WW2 guilt) or outright hostile (such as immigration from Muslim and Arab lands) further increased the wave of anti-Israel sentiment among the political Left.

The Hasbarists have done a poor job of trying to find their footing in the new political climate. It would appear that they are trying to locate the happy medium, the political center for appeal. The problem is that there is no liberal center - but rather varying degrees of leftism until one reaches a point where they are decidedly right-wing. The defiantly self-styled centrist liberal Hasbarists (and Jews in general) have gone the extra mile in trying to identify themselves with every vestige and appearance of left-wing rhetoric and causes without actually promoting the internals of this ideology whole-heartedly. The Jewish establishment isn’t ready to consider itself aligned with the right wing, so it grasps at straws of discrimination, persecution, and indigeneity - the pet causes of the left today, as a way to find its political relevance within the camp of the left.

But in the Hasbarist mindset, these aren’t actual leftist causes, but merely more categories of humanity that must be emancipated - not based on universal class struggle, but out of universal principles of liberalism and human rights. In this view, the appeal to indigeneity is an understanding of having a source of national pride and not existing as a dispossessed minority. The appeal to decolonization is an understanding that self-government and self-rule yields better results than being a second-class colony of a greater power. In a certain sense, this is an appeal to Neoconservatism more than it is to Liberalism - after all, Centrist-Liberal Hasbarists have no appreciation for a ‘land-back’ movement that would restore the practices of scalping or human sacrifice, nor for a ‘decolonization’ movement that would usher in an Islamist or Jihadist government, nor is their value in ‘indigeneity’ if it means a return to pre-modern, pre-industrial societies.

Why Leftists Will Win This Battle

It should be stated first that modern-day leftists are not true Marxists at all, but merely use leftism as a vehicle for their own grievance politics. Long gone is the prominence of respectable leftist theorists who offered critiques of the socio-cultural effects capitalism, and who criticized the traditional hierarchical ecclesiastical and hierarchical institutions. The new breed of leftists are nothing more than grievance peddlers. They are utterly unconcerned with the unity of the global proletariat, or any consistent social or economic theory that extends beyond resentment against the specific group or collection of groups which they perceive as holding power - the strong, the well-born, and the successful. Their thought (if it can even be called such) has nothing to do with profound social analysis, systemic inequalities, systems of oppression, market theories, or really anything that resembles a coherent social or economic theory. The modern day left asylum is being run by its very inmates which it had previously championed and for which it had advocated and defended.

They are a potent and powerful political force, not so much because of their brilliant ideas or their immense charisma, but because of the exaltation of perceived weakness and oppression as innate virtues, and of the fetishization of the previously-distant noble savage as an aesthetic value by the progressive-liberal-humanitarian alliance of the previous political-discursive cycle. But as mentioned previously, this axis is now on the decline, and is unable to stand up and defend itself because doing so would be inherently reactionary; it would be an implicit admission of guilt and error: ideological suicide. It would require at the very least a reassessment of the notion that the good, the true, and the beautiful are not inherently found in the poor and in the disenfranchised.

The Jew might cry out in pain as he strikes you, but the peasant will parrot phrases about human equality, self determination, and systems of oppression while raping your daughters and dismembering your elders. The striking Jew can be talked to and reasoned with, to eventually discover that the Jew is always in pain and truly finds discomfort in striking his host; he does so only because of an overly sensitive prey drive, and in which an agreement can be reached. The murderous ‘leftist’ peasant cannot be reasoned with; if you dare criticize his heroic actions of revolutionary rape and torture, he will only glance at you with disdain and bewilderment. The leftist peasant lacks a theory of mind for human agency, including his own. For the leftist peasant, you are nothing more but a tool to further his ends- just as a banana tree bears fruit, so does the liberal ally bear political support; with the peasant seeing no moral obligation to either.

An Appeal to Normal (Liberal) People

True Liberalism, which I believe Israel (and much of the west) still embodies to a certain extent, is now opposed to Leftism, and is perceived to be in the camp of right wing nationalist movements (The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders is a great example). To be a true Liberal today means to be directionally reactionary, just as being a Liberal during the enlightenment meant being directionally anticlerical. What was previously the axis of humanitarian liberalism has now become largely a moderate form of leftism - many of these still exist due to a reluctance to embrace reactionary politics, and would rather prefer to view leftists as well-intentioned but ultimately misguided souls. In this case, these self-styled liberals will generally follow and perceive leftist causes with some sympathy while rejecting or merely tolerating those aspects explicit leftist verbiage they might find unfavorable.

The appeal to all these cringeworthy leftist talking points actually weakens the appeal of Israel to any liberal sensibilities. Liberals may tolerate leftist verbiage, but do not actually embrace it. Liberals do not actually care if Israel has decolonized the land, nor do they care if Jews are actually indigenous, nor do they give a damn about how brown or white Israelis are. Liberals care about whether a country is well ordered or not, and probably whether it shares values similar to their own - and these values are generally in harmony with western values as a whole - freedom of speech, valuing education, a well-ordered society, and probably most importantly - that the country they support doesn’t actively work against his interests.

There actually is an audience for the indigeneity and decolonization talking points - but it’s actually the right wing, and not the left - something I’ll get to later on.

The King of Grievance Politics

The above mentioned point also inclines me to point out another overemphasized talking point, that of the Holocaust or the Shoah. The Shoa is the mother of all injustices and historical atrocities in the western public consciousness - in this sense, any participant in the moral-political sphere of discourse must have their referent in the events of WW2 - the chief battle between good and evil. Well-meaning Jews used the Shoah as a means to advocate - not only for themselves - but also for other groups they perceived as being oppressed. Holocaust museums were erected in nearly every major urban center across US to remind people of the atrocities that the Jews suffered under the Nazis, and ensure that never again would such events transpire.

It is certainly true, yes, we were slaughtered, yes, we suffered a lot, yes, nobody came to our aid - however, Jews as a whole have entirely recovered demographically as well as economically from these events. When someone views a Jew today, they do not view a victim of a past atrocity, but rather an economically successful, well-adjusted member of society, and those who actually lived through the Shoah are almost entirely gone. As Jews, we must ask ourselves what function the Shoah actually serves - both for ourselves, and in general political discourse for the West as a whole.

It is my view that discourse about the Shoah has run its course, and no longer serves as beneficial for the Jewish people. While for internal Jewish discourse, it is certainly an important historical event that had far reaching implications for the development of both Israel and Diaspora Jewry, it no longer carries the weight of the trauma that was inflicted on those who actually experienced it. Generational trauma might be real, but all world populations lived through some kind of trauma at some point of their lives - certainly generational trauma has some kind of expiration date.

Yet, we must be aware that the majority of the world’s population - and even the majority of the West - was neither a victim nor a perpetrator of the Shoah (aside from Germans themselves, but this requires a separate dialogue); and at this point, most of the world was not even alive when it happened. Certainly Gad Saad’s Roscoe Jethro never manned a concentration camp - nor did any of his relatives. In a sense, the Shoah is now a foundational myth rather than an aspect of actual history, and we should investigate what the specific details of this myth entail, and what consequences it has for political morality in the current year.

While for most Jews, the Shoah was a specific event in history that was perpetrated by a specific people against a specific people, the current narrative has somewhat changed. Mentions of the Shoah certainly still showcase the Jews, but the more modern descriptions never fail to mention the other victims - romani, homosexuals, and other racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Holocaust discourse itself is now accompanied by general terms of intolerance and hatred rather than the traditional understanding - of Nazi Antisemitism. This kind of reaction and development is natural - and a consequence of Jews overpromoting it in political discourse; it was only a matter of time before other groups inevitably began to identify their own plight with the foundational myth, and thus the physical persecuted Jews become replaced by the spiritual category of the oppressed. The decentering of Jews as the primary victims of the holocaust has gone to such levels of absurdity that in the current Israel/Palestine discourse, leftists tend to equate Israelis with the Nazis and Palestinians with the Jews (for extra effect, leftists like to bring out a ‘holocaust survivor’ or a ‘child of holocaust survivors’, so as to ensure that there remains some kind of ritual continuity). For a Jew this seems patently absurd, but when abstracted from real historical events and transformed into political categories, there is no contradiction whatsoever.

For those who aren’t leftists, excessive holocaust discourse can breed resentment - as a topic which is already well known and taught in schools, it seems that education as a general part of history is more than the intended purpose. The result of the implied imputed guilt against Western civilization is misplaced and misguided - leading either to the belief in a Jewish conspiracy to convince the Western world to be kind to the Jews for factors not having to do with the Jews themselves (which is not a liberal principle), or going even further, an increased motivation to support holocaust revisionism as a means to combat the foundational myth of postwar morality.

Indigeneity as National Rebirth and Reclamation

One way in which the discourse of indigeneity can help Hasbarist causes is as an explicit appeal to nationalist movements in Europe, as a means of finding common cause and sympathy. European Nationalists in many ways feel a kind of sympathy and envy of Israel. In their view, Israel has their own national homeland, with self-determination for the dominant ethnic group enshrined into law. The Israeli government restricts immigration and is generally perceived as working for the benefit of the nation as an ethnic group and not merely as a propositional nation.

Shared ancestry, history, traditions, cultures, and religion are what binds Israeli Jews together, with the resettlement on their ancestral land being seen as this very symbol of unity. As the Western world falls deeper and deeper into a deracinated and soulless liberalism, where any conversation of shared heritage and ancestry is seen as a deliberate appeal to hate speech, Ethnonationalists look at how things can be different. Ethnonationalists dream of Israel.

The Israeli State is also unafraid to use violence to protect its political goals - self interested, with national survival as its main aim and principle of morality. This does not mean the Israeli state is brutal or cruel; this point should be clearly emphasized as well - Israel is willing to tolerate and even embrace the presence of ethnic minorities in its land, allowing them to fully participate in the civil and political sphere, provided that they show loyalty to the state and its people (as it should be). Perhaps as Jews we ought to think about our own civic obligations to the nations in which we reside in the diaspora - we can practice our religion, have our freedom of speech, retain our ethnic continuity, but always be conscious that the Diaspora is not our land - regardless of the levels of power we may attain there, we exist at the good will of those lands’ people - be they the Americans, the British, the French, the Spanish, etc.

We should be under no illusions that somehow the Western ethnonationalist right will become our friends overnight. Many of these groups have deep antipathy towards Jews - some justified, and some unjustified; yet it is clear that most of the immediate hatred and feelings of dispossession comes from mass immigration from the third world. It is certain that Jews are involved in left wing politics and that as individuals as well as (mainly liberal, progressive) Jewish advocacy groups have pushed for these policies - though of course one may debate to what extent and impact, and in general a more comprehensive reckoning of Jewish-Ethnonationalist relations can be found in my previous essay