He writes:
"I also noticed that personal indignation has the magic power of shifting the frame of discourse from arguing Israel's policies to the very core of the Middle-East conflict -- denying Israel's legitimacy -- an issue where Israel's case is strongest and where Israel's adversaries find themselves in an embarrassing and morally indefensible position.
More pointedly, I felt invigorated by practicing what I have been preaching for months: Religion has no monopoly on human sensitivity, Zionophobia is no less revolting than Islamophobia.
Here I have exercised my right to be offended not against abusers of my religious beliefs -- this I can stomach -- but in defense of a more pivotal part of my identity -- my people, our history, our collective memory and our collective aspirations -- in short, in defense of Zionism."
I agree that more offense needs to be taken when confronting the systematic and sustained attack against Israel's legitimacy. After all, there is no other country in the world that has been subjected to the level of scrutiny or held up to the standards that Israel is expected to maintain. No other country has its legitimacy regularly and publicly questioned and no other country faces such a continued existential assault. Certainly no other country is so regularly demonized in the mainstream press.
While Israel's detractors no doubt feel that the "stranglehold" of the American Jewish community has prevented honest debate on the Middle East, I have long felt that the American Jewish community has largely sat idle while secretly hoping that "all of this" will just go away. Many have preferred to remain silent because they think that both Israel as a country and Jews as a people are strong enough that we do not need to dignify every bit of nonsense that is uttered or reported with a response. As Pearl rightly notes:
"We, as Jews, have been grossly negligent in permitting the dehumanization of Israel to become socially acceptable in certain circles of society, especially on college campuses. Our silence, natural resilience to insults and general reluctance to confront colleagues and friends have contributed significantly to the Orwellianization of campus vocabulary, and the legitimization of the unacceptable. Most of our assailants are even unaware of the shiver that goes down our spines with utterances such as "apartheid Israeli regime" or "brutal Israeli occupation"." (Italics added)
As an anthropologist who is interested in network studies, this certainly rings true. Many studies have shown that individuals are so embedded and impacted by their social networks that the very notion of agency or free will is compromised. As Jacob Moreno showed back in the 1930s, the impact of one's social network (i.e. your society - in the most limited sense of the word) is so subtle and pervasive that even one's most prosaic decisions are being affected by their social web. During his study of a sorority, Moreno discovered that many of the housemates were purchasing the same shampoo even though they claimed never to have discussed the matter.
Basically, Pearl's point is that by not speaking up and taking offense, we are all actually complicit in the shift in discourse and stigmatization of Israel that is undermining the country's security. In fact, this can and should be seen as Israel's greatest long-term threat.
Sadly, Pearl's analysis reminds me of the "History of Anti-Semitism" class that I took at Hebrew University in Jerusalem back in the early 1990s. At the time it was my great privilege to have been a student of Prof. Robert Wistrich - a real "mensch", scholar and visionary thinker - who is currently at the helm of the Vidal Sassoon (speaking of shampoo!) International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. The take-home message of this class was that the real threats facing the Jewish people are precisely the long-term ones.
In a series of studies which has culminated in his latest offering, Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe (2007), Wistrich has demonstrated that the ideological underpinnings of Nazi anti-Semitism were being planted in the 1870s. That the incredibly talented Jewish community of that era (think Freud, Kafka and Einstein) failed to properly gauge the nature and depth of this loathsome ideology should send a chill down the spines of American Jews who have regularly failed to confront the recent wave of Zionophobia (to use Pearl's terms).
So, at the sake of being accused of seeing a Holocaust around every corner, I agree with Pearl that we can no longer be complacent or assume that reason will necessarily prevail in the end. As someone who has spent the greater part of the last six years on a college campus, I can report that reason is a much maligned notion and should not be counted on to prevail. Even worse, the panjandrums of post-modernism espouse a moral relativism that questions whether such a thing as right and wrong exists in a world where all truth is hegemonic and socially constructed.
Yet, I must also share some reservations that I have with Pearl's suggestion:
1. This approach echoes the tactic taken by the "politically correct" crowd. In practice this means that people keep thinking terrible things, but are afraid to say them in public. Sometimes it is better to have this out in the open rather than quietly festering into radicalism.
2. In the case of Judea Pearl it would be downright rude to argue with him when he says he is offended. Aside from his celebrity status and ongoing efforts to bridge the divide that separates Jews and Muslims, he is the father of a brutally slain son whose last words were "I am a Jew". When I say that, as a Jew, I am offended by the demonization of Israel, there is the distinct possibility that this will only open me up to even more scorn and derision.
3. Many American Jews are woefully unfamiliar with the specifics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Indeed, many Jews resent the conflict as an impediment to their ongoing assimilation efforts. Even worse, there are a growing number of "progressive Jews" who have indiscriminately adopted the Palestinian narrative.
4. Finally, though I often prefer to be feared rather than loved, I find that many Jews have a deep-seated desire for approbation and acceptance from their non-Jewish neighbors that I suspect stems from generations of disenfranchisement and social isolation . Contrast the Jewish obsession with, "What will the Goyim think?" with the reaction of many Muslims to the "Cartoon Controversy" or African-Americans to the Don Imus affair.
So, while Pearl's approach has merit, we need to first educate Jewish people about their historic and national rights and then get them out on to the streets when we feel offended. Sure, this approach may not win us many friends, but if the recent history of the Jewish people teaches me anything, it is that if we fail to act now, we will live to regret it later. Besides, many of these offenders will never be our friends or allies. It is fine by me if they crawl back under the rocks that they came from.
To read Pearl's article in its entirety - Click Here.
