February 29, 2008
Another Boycott Debate
Over at Reset DOC, Mitchell Cohen, Andrew Arato, Ernesto Ferrero, Mohamed Salmawy and Daniele Castellani Perelli debate the boycott the Book Fair in Turin for asking Israel to be its guest of honour. Cohen:
This campaign is wrong-headed, often slanderous, and betrays the best ideals of the left and democracy.
I say this, indeed I would insist on this, as an American leftist who has in fact opposed many Israeli policies, especially the settlements, for decades. When these anti-Israeli campaigners hiss at “the Zionists,” they remind me of American neo-conservatives hissing at “leftists.” The hiss itself should tell you that there is something wrong. And note the fact that attempts in Britain to boycott Israeli universities were thwarted because they contravened anti-discrimination laws. From a political point of view, the efforts were also ridiculous. Israeli universities have been major bastions of dovish sentiment. Israel’s 60th anniversary should be celebrated and Israeli-Palestinian peace should be sought at the same time.
This was not the right time to make Israel the guest of honor at a book fair, unless Israeli Jewish and Arab writers were put into the center of attention. With that said, the boycott is stupid. Why boycott precisely the writers who are critical of government policies? Yes, let us support the Israel's right to exist. But a state is a people, a territory and a coercive organization. There is no question about the identity of the coercive organization, and we should accept it as such. But should we all accept every Jew (by the very uncertain standards of the Law of Return and subsequent interpretations) to be part of the people of Israel, wherever they live, whatever their religion, when people born in the present borders (1948, 1967, 2008) cannot be because of their ethnicity or religion?
Posted by Robin Varghese at 02:10 PM | Permalink
Comments
some wise soul pointed out that the far left for many years followed Marixst thought and believed in the class struggle but with the collapse of marxism, it was clear that there was no real class struggle to identify with son, instead, the lefties identified with "the dispossed" or those they believed the downtrodden. And hence much of the left antipathy toward Israel. Misled, I believe, but then if at first you and yhour theories do not succeed etc etc
Posted by: fred lapides | Feb 29, 2008 4:24:19 PM
Cohen writes:
"There must be no ambiguity: Israel has or has not the right to exist as any other State."
There's actually quite a lot of ambiguity there. For a start, I've heard it argued that only people have rights: states have no rights except as expressions of those people's rights. If so, for Israel one has to consider how well various people's rights are being expressed in an officially Jewish state.
But that aside, there is still ambiguity. For instance, were Israel to be reconstituted as a republic (i.e. a state of and for its citizens) rather than a state for Jews, would that count as continued existence for the purposes of a right to exist? This is arguably similar to what happened to apartheid South Africa. Some people would refer to this as "the destruction of Israel" or, more carefully, "the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state", with all the imagery associated with the word "destruction". Others might say that Israel would continue to exist since most of the institutions of the country would continue to exist.
Whether or not it counts as continued existence seems to me less important than whether such a reconstitution is desirable. It's not clear to me what a "right to exist" means in that context.
Posted by: Sagredo | Feb 29, 2008 7:52:57 PM
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