Amos Oz on nationalism and Zionism

Hey chaverim--I used this text (which we read on kaveret) in a J Street peula about the meaning and complications of a Jewish state/any nation-state based on an identity. For me, this really nicely reflects the challenges of understanding Zionism in the context of nationalism.

This is the place to make my first shocking confession -- others will follow. I think that the nation-state is a tool, an instrument, that is necessary for a return to Zion, but I am not enamored of this instrument. The idea of the nation-state is, in my eyes, “goyim naches” - a gentiles’ delight. I would be more than happy to live in a world composed of dozens of civilizations, each developing in accordance with its own internal rhythm, all cross-pollinating one another, without any one emerging as a nation-state: no flag, no emblem, no passport, no anthem. No nothing. Only spiritual civilizations tied somehow to their lands, without the tools of statehood and without the instruments of war.

But the Jewish people has already staged a long-running one-man show of that sort. The international audience sometimes applauded, sometimes threw stones, and occasionally slaughtered the actor. No one joined us; no one copied the model the Jews were forced to sustain for two thousand years, the model of a civilization without the “tools of statehood.” For me this drama ended with the murder of Europe’s Jews by Hitler. And I am forced to take it upon myself to play the “game of nations,” with all the tools of statehood, even though it causes me to feel (as George Steiner) like an old man in a kindergarten. To play the game with an emblem, and a flag and a passport and an army, and even war, provided that such war is an absolute existential necessity. I accept those rules of the game because existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger, but I accept them only up to this point. To take pride in these tools of statehood? To worship these toys? To crow about them? Not I. If we must maintain these tools, including the instruments of death, it must be not only with glee but with wisdom as well. I would say with no glee at all, only with wisdom--and with caution. Nationalism itself is, in my eyes, the curse of mankind.

--Amos Oz, 1982

Between Right and Right - Amos Oz

Who are the good guys? That's what every well-meaning European, left-wing European, intellectual European, liberal European always wants to know, first and foremost. Who are the good guys in the film and who are the bad guys. In this respect Vietnam was easy: The Vietnamese people were the victims, and the Americans were the bad guys. The same with apartheid: You could easily see that apartheid was a crime and that the struggle for civil rights, for liberation and equality, and for human dignity was right. The struggle between colonialism and imperialism, on the one hand, and the victims of colonialism and imperialism, on the other, seems relatively simple--you can tell the good guys from the bad. When it comes to the foundations of the Israeli-Arab conflict, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, things are not so straightforward. And I am afraid I am not going to make things any easier for you by saying simply: These are the angels, these are the devils; you just have to support the angels, and good will prevail over evil. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Wild West movie. It is not a struggle between good and evil, rather it is a tragedy in the ancient and most precise sense of the word: a clash between right and right, a clash between one very powerful, deep, and convincing claim, and another very different but no less convincing, no less powerful, no less humane claim.

The Palestinians are in Palestine because Palestine is the homeland, and the only homeland, of the Palestinian people. In the same way in which Holland is the homeland of the Dutch, or Sweden the homeland of the Swedes. The Israeli Jews are in Israel because there is no other country in the world that the Jews, as a people, as a nation, could ever call home. As individuals, yes, but not as a people, not as a nation. The Palestinians have tried, unwillingly, to live in other Arab countries. They were rejected, sometimes even humiliated and persecuted by the so-called Arab family. They were made aware in the most painful way of their "Palestinianness"; they were not wanted by Lebanese or Syrians, by Egyptians or Iraqis. They had to learn the hard way that they are Palestinians, and that's the only country that they can hold on to. In a strange way the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have had a somewhat parallel historical experience. The Jews were kicked out of Europe; my parents were kicked out of Europe some seventy years ago. Just like the Palestinians were first kicked out of Palestine and then out of the Arab countries, or almost. When my father was a little boy in Poland, the streets of Europe were covered with graffiti, "Jews, go back to Palestine," or sometimes worse: "Dirty Yids, piss off to Palestine." When my father revisited Europe fifty years later, the walls were covered with new graffiti, "Jews, get out of Palestine."

People in Europe keep sending me wonderful invitations to spend a rosy weekend in a delightful resort with Palestinian partners, Palestinian colleagues, Palestinian counterparts, so that we can learn to know one another, to like one another, to drink a cup of coffee together, so that we realize that no one has horns and tails--and the trouble will go away. This is based on the widespread sentimental European idea that every conflict is essentially no more than a misunderstanding. A little group therapy, a touch of family counseling, and everyone will live happily ever after. Well, first, I have bad news for you: Some conflicts are very real; they are much worse than a mere misunderstanding. And then I have some sensational news for you: There is no essential misunderstanding between Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jew. The Palestinians want the land they call Palestine. They have very strong reasons to want it. The Israeli Jews want exactly the same land for exactly the same reasons, which provides for a perfect understanding between the parties, and for a terrible tragedy. Rivers of coffee drunk together cannot extinguish the tragedy of two peoples claiming, and I think rightly claiming, the same small country as their one and only national homeland in the whole world. So, drinking coffee together is wonderful and I'm all for it, especially if it is Arabic coffee, which is infinitely better than Israeli coffee. But drinking coffee cannot do away with the trouble

Right Against Right - Amos Oz

I have tried to describe, perhaps a little too starkly, both the view that regards the dispute as a kind of western with the civilized good guys righting the blood-thirsty natives, and also the romantic conceptions that endow it with the attributes of an ancient epic. As I see it, the confrontation between the Jews returning to Zion and the Arab inhabitants of the country is not like a western or an epic, but more like a Greek tragedy. It is a clash between right and right (although one must not seek a simplistic symmetry in it). And, as in all tragedies, there is no hope of a happy reconciliation based on a clever magical formula. The choice is between a bloodbath and a disappointing compromise, more like enforced acceptance than a sudden break-through of mutual understanding. 

True, the dispute is not 'symmetrical'. There is no symmetry between the constant, eager attempts of Zionism to establish a dialogue with the local Arabs and those of the neighboring states, and the bitter and consistent hostility the Arabs, with all their different political regimes, have for decades shown us in return. 

But it is a gross mistake, a common over-simplification, to believe that the dispute is based on a misunderstanding. It is based on full and complete understanding: we have repeatedly offered the Arabs goodwill, good neighborliness and cooperation, but that was not what they wanted from us. They wanted us, according to the most moderate Arab formulation, to abandon the idea of establishing a free Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and that is a concession we can never make. 

It is the height of naivety to believe that but for the intrigues of outsiders and the backwardness of fanatical regimes, the Arabs would realize the positive side of the Zionist enterprise and straightaway fall on our necks in brotherly love. 

The Arabs did not oppose Zionism because they failed to understand it but because they understood it only too well. And that is the tragedy: the mutual understanding does exist. We want to exist as a nation, as a State of Jews. They do not want that state. This cannot be glossed over with high-sounding phrases, neither the noble aspirations to brotherliness of well-meaning Jews, nor the clever Arab tactics of 'We will be content, at this stage, with the return of all refugees to their previous place of residence.' Any search for a way out must start from a fundamental change of position preceded by the open-eyed realization of the full extent of the struggle: a tragic conflict, tragic anguish. 

We are here because this is the only place where we can exist as a free nation. The Arabs are here because Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinians, just as Iraq is the homeland of the Iraqis and Holland the homeland of the Dutch. The question of what cultural assets the Palestinians have created here or what care they have taken of the landscape or the agriculture is of no relevance to the need to discuss their right to their homeland. Needless to say, the Palestinian owes no deference to God's promises to Abraham, to the longings of Yehuda Hallevi and Bialik, or the achievements of the early Zionist pioneers. 

Current talk about pushing the Palestinian masses back to oil-rich Kuwait or fertile Iraq makes no more sense than would talking about our own mass emigration to 'Jewish' Brooklyn. Knaves and fools in both camps might add: 'After all, they'll be among their brothers there.' But just as I am entitled to see myself as an Israeli Jew, not a Brooklyner or a Golders Greener, so a Palestinian Arab is entitled to regard himself as a Palestinian, not an Iraqi or Kuwaiti. The fact that only an enlightened minority of Palestinians seem to see it that way at the moment cannot prejudice the national right to self-determination when the time comes. Let us remember with all the reservations the comparison requires - that it was only a Zionist-minded minority of Jews that - justly! - claimed the right to establish a Hebrew State here in the name of the entire Jewish people for the benefit of the Jews who would one day come to a national consciousness. 

This land is our land. It is also their land. Right conflicts with right. To be a free people in our own land' is a right that is valid either universally or not at all.

On Judaism as a Civilization - Amos Oz

Religion is a central element in the Jewish civilization, perhaps even its origin, but that civilization cannot be presented as nothing more than religion. From the religious source of that civilization grew spiritual manifestations that enhanced the religious experience, changed it, and even reacted against it: language, customs, lifestyles, characteristic sensitivities (or perhaps it should be said, sensitivities that used to be characteristic), and literature and art and ideas and opinions. All of this is Judaism. The rebellion and apostasy in our history and in recent generations - they are Judaism, too. A broad and abundant inheritance. And I see myself as one of the legitimate heirs: not as a stepson, or a disloyal and defiant son, or a bastard, but as a lawful heir.

And what follows from my status as an heir will certainly cause you people great unease, for it follows that I am free to decide what I will choose from this great inheritance, to decide what I will place in my living room and what I will relegate to the attic. Certainly our children have the right to "import" and combine with my inheritance what I see fit - without imposing my taste or preference on another heir, on you for one. That is the pluralism I praised earlier. It is my right to decide what suits me and what doesn't, what is important and what is negligible and what to put into storage. Neither you, nor the ultraorthodox, nor Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz can tell me, in whatever terms, that it's a package deal and I should take it or leave it. It is my right to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And from this follows another fateful spiritual decision: can any civilization survive as a museum or does it only live when it wears the garb of dramatic improvisation?

A museum curator relates ritualistically to his ancestral heritage: on tiptoe, in awe, he arranges the artifacts, polishes the glass cases, cautiously interprets the significance of the items in the collection, guides the astonished visitors, convinces the public, and seeks, in due time, to pass on the keys of the museum to his sons after him. The museum curator will proclaim, Holy, Holy, Holy. And he will proclaim, I am too humble to determine what is important here. It is my lot only to see that the light of this inheritance shall shine in as many eyes as possible, and that nothing is damaged or lost. Up to this point I have presented a drawing (sketchy and simplistic, for the sake of argument) of the museum curator. But I believe there can be no vital existence for a museum civilization. Eventually it is bound to shrivel and to cut off its creative energies: at first it permits innovations only on the foundations of the old, then the freedom is restricted to the freedom to interpret, after that it becomes permissible only to interpret the meaning of the interpretations, until finally all that is left is to polish the artifacts in their cases.

A living civilization is a drama of struggle between interpretations, outside influences, and emphases, an unrelenting struggle over what is the wheat and what is the chaff, rebellion for the sake of innovation, dismantling for the purpose of reassembling differently, and even putting things in storage to clear the stage for experiment and new creativity. And it is permissible to seek inspiration from and by other civilizations as well. This implies a realization that struggle and pluralism are not just an eclipse or a temporary aberration but, rather, the natural climate for a living culture. And the rebel, the dismantler, is not necessarily perverted or trying to assimilate. And the heretic and the prober are, sometimes, the harbingers of the creator and the innovator.

On this we disagree, at the root of the matter: Museum or drama? Ritual or creativity? Total orientation toward the past - "What was is what will be" - i which every question has an answer from the holy books, every new enemy is simply a reincarnation of an old familiar one - or not? Can it be that history is not a spinning wheel but a twisting line, which, even if it loops and curves, is essentially linear, not circular?