Joel Kovell: Jewish Denial Zionism's Bad Conscience.

This is an old but very interesting article by Joel Kovel a professor at Bard College on Zionism. Kovel's writings and Kovel himself have both been roundly criticised by pro-Israel groups. Below the article is a letter by Kovel to the Bard administration which has not renewed his contract. The administration claims the non-renewal is simply due to budget restraints but who knows.


http://www.joelkovel.org/zionism.htmlTikkun Sept/Oct 2002 Jewish DenialZionism's Bad ConscienceJoel KovelLet me begin with some blunt questions, the harshness of which matchesthe situation in Israel/ Palestine. How have the Jews, immemoriallyassociated with suffering and high moral purpose, become identifiedwith a nation-state loathed around the world for its oppressivenesstoward a subjugated indigenous people? Why have a substantial majorityof Jews chosen to flaunt world opinion in order to rally about a statethat essentially has turned its occupied lands into a hugeconcentration camp and driven its occupied peoples to such gruesomeexpedients as suicide bombing? Why does the Zionist community, inraging against terrorism, forget that three of its prime ministerswithin the last twenty years Begin, Shamir and Sharon are openlyrecognized to have been world-class terrorists and mass murderers? Andwhy will these words just written and the words of other Jewscritical of Israel be greeted with hatred and bitter denunciation byZionists and called "self-hating" and "anti-Semitic"? Why do Zionistsnot see, or to be more exact, why do they see yet deny, the brutalreality that this state has wrought?The use of the notion of denial here suggests a psychologicaltreatment of the Zionist community. But in matters of this sort,psychology is only one aspect of a greater whole that includesobdurate facts like forceful occupation of land claimed by and onceinhabited by others. The phenomena of conscience are of courseprocessed subjectively. But they neither originate within the mind norremain limited to thoughts and feelings. Conscience is objective, too,and linked to notions like justice and law that exist outside of anyindividual will. It is also collective, and pertains to what is doneby the group in whose membership identity is formed. These groupphenomena are, we might say, organized into "moral universes," inwhich history, mythology, and individual moral behaviors are broughttogether and made into a larger whole. Such universes may themselvesbe universalizing, wherein that whole is inclusive of others, who areseen as parts of a common humanity (or for non-human creatures,nature). Or, as all too often happens, they may be unified only bysplitting apart of the moral faculties.Now, the situation prevailing in Israel/Palestine is that commonhumanity is denied, the Other is not recognized, and the doublestandard prevails. In such conceptions, which have stained historysince the beginning and comprise one of the chief impediments to themaking of a better world, talion law reigns, violence toward the Otheris condoned, and violence from the Other is demonized. Like the realmsof matter and anti-matter, each such moral universe is paired withthat of its adversary. But such mirroring does not imply moralequivalence; that is settled according to the rules of justice. Inthis instance there should be no doubt that those who havedispossessed others and illegally occupy their national lands have tobear prime culpability. This is not meant to excuse such Palestinianor Arab wrongdoings as have arisen in the course of the strugglewhich would be a denial of moral agency but it provides contextfor understanding the conflict at a deeper level and obliges us tolook with special care at the curious situation of the Jews. Despitethe innumerable variations between different fractions of Judaism,here certain unique historical forces have shaped a common dilemma andplayed a crucial role in the unfolding of Zionism.Jews were supposed to know better, to be better. Suffering persecutionand being eternally on the margins of Europe were supposed to havemade Jews more morally developed. I speak from first-hand experience,having been made to feel as a boy that I had inherited a two-foldsuperiority, by belonging to a people both cleverer and more highlymoral than the non-Jews who surrounded us. We Jews were history'sexceptions.A myth made this belief coherent over the ages and shaped Jewishidentity: A "covenant" existed, a kind of special treaty and promisebetween Jews and God. How Odd of God, ran the title of a book from myboyhood Yeshiva days, to Choose the Jews. There was an unmistakablelift one got from feeling endowed by the Supreme Being and madesuperior to the mere "goyim." The morally dubious implications of thisattitude and the hateful contempt that often accompanied it indeed,one could almost hear the sputum striking the ground as the word,"goyim," was spoken was mitigated by the fact that Jews werespeaking from the position of victim. Jewish exceptionalism was a kindof payback that nullified the centuries of being forced into ghettos,being denied ordinary rights such as land-holding, and being kickedaround, massacred, and expelled, not to mention being constantly inthe cross-hairs of the reigning racist system of anti-Semitism.Living with anti-Semitism, even when its overt violence was latent,contributed to the heightened self-consciousness of the Jewishcharacter and also to its thin skin. Few Jews are able completely toavoid the visceral fear integral to the legacy of Judaism: a drumbeatof blame, with its intimations of the pogrom to follow. The Jew stilllives with the fact that his/her people have been scapegoated forcenturies by Christian Europe we still hear in our heads that Jewswere the killers of Christ, hence responsible for the failures ofChristianity; Jews were the usurers who destroyed the medievalcommunity, not the landlords/barons; Jews were responsible for themisery of the Russian masses, not the Czar. In ways too numerous tolist here, Jews were made to pay for the crimes of the West, and thebetrayal of its ideals. The peculiar exaltation of believing oneselfthe chosen people is both the effect and, to a degree, the cause ofanti-Semitic persecution: They hate us, but we are better than them;and then, they hate us because we are better than them. Exceptionalismreinforced the tribalism imposed upon the Jews; and tribalism playedinto the hands of anti-Semitism even as it defended against it.Within this matrix a great variety of ways of being Jewisharose. These included, especially for Jews in the Western EuropeanDiaspora, the possibility of assimilating or remaining apart from thesocieties they inhabited. Some Jews, of course, embraced theprotection of tribal ways as a defense against a harsh and accusingworld. Others embraced the calculating pecuniary skills which had beenfoisted upon Judaism long before capitalism became the dominant order,and developed these to become masters of finance once capital moved tothe center of the stage. In the West, some Jews saw in the greatideals of universality and enlightenment a means to transcend thestifling tribal role that had been imposed upon them. Having beenpersecuted, brutally denied the elementary rights ofself-determination given to others, Jews of this type adopted theideals of universal human rights that arose with the Enlightenment,and championed the cause of emancipation.Then, toward the close of the nineteenth century, the ancient promiseof the Covenant took the shape of a real Promised Land. Israel gaveEuropean Jews a material opportunity to balance the tensions betweentribalism and enlightenment. Driven by the upswelling of anti-Semitismthat preceded and gave its horrific stimulus to the Third Reich,Israel became the home of the tribe, the safe place where Jews couldbe Jews. At the same time, it offered Jews identifying with theenlightenment a chance to demonstrate their competence in westernliberal ways (including socialism). In this way, a project arose thatsought to combine and synthesize both advanced Western democratic andancient tribal values.The Zionists took from the West the values of liberal democracy, butalso the goals, tactics, and mentality of imperialism that oftenaccompanied these. The convergence between tribalism and imperialismseemed, on the surface, to be a successful alignment of the variousimpulses of the Zionist project. From the first Jewish settlements inPalestine an imperialist mentality enabled Zionists to readilyrationalize their displacement of indigenous Palestinians under thenotion of a civilizing mission, embroidered with a full repertoire ofOrientalist prejudices.Zionism's allegiance to modernity also gave Zionism a high degree oftechnological prowess and organizational ability. During the years ofthe Yishuv, or settlement, this was evidenced by the degree to whichZionists would consistently out-produce and out-perform the indigenouspeoples despite the great numerical superiority of the latter. Later,in the period of the wars leading up to the state of Israel, as wellas the wars carried out by this state, superior organizational abilitycombined with superior weaponry made Israel into a regional juggernautone, moreover, driven by the talion law of tribalism and the racistreduction of one's adversary.It was for some time easy to sympathize with a Jewish state and tooverlook its imperialist tendencies, especially in the crucial periodof the mid- to late 1940s, when evidence of the Holocaust surfaced asa diabolic reminder of Jewish vulnerability to the malignancies ofso-called Western Civilization. I remember well as a youth of twelvethe rush of joy and hope as it became increasingly clear that we wereat last going to have "our state," and I know full well how deeply theJews around me shared that feeling.But neither understanding nor sympathy can nullify the judgment thatin proceeding down this path, Zionism set the stage, as surely ascould an Aeschylus or Euripides, for the present hellish outcome. Andthis has a great deal to do with the fact that the notion of ademocratic Jewish state, despite its allure, is a logicalimpossibility and a trap. It is remarkable that so sophisticated apeople should have so much trouble grasping the impossibility inherentin their notion of a Promised Land: a democracy that is only to be fora certain people cannot exist, for the elementary reason that themodern democratic state is defined by its claims of universality.Modern nation-states are uneasy syntheses of the two terms: thenation, which embodies the lived, sensuous, territorial, andmythologized history of a people; and the state, which is thesuperordinate agency regulating a society and having the capacity, asMax Weber put it, to wield legitimate violence. In its pre-modern,non-democratic form, the nation-state could embrace directly the willof a particular national body. Under these circumstances, state powerwas held by those who controlled the nation. In practice, these were amixture of kings and aristocrats who exerted direct territorialdominion, along with the theocrats of the priest class who controlledsymbolic and mythopoetic production. Between the divine right of kingsand the territorial powers of priests, the legality of pre-modernstates took shape.The democratic nation-state was a mutation of this arrangement, forgedto accommodate the power of the newly emerging capitalist classes, butalso to advance the notion of an universal human right the stirringideal that all human beings are created equally free before thelaw. The subsequent history of this political formation reveals, inall its fragility, the tensions inherent in the fitful development ofhuman rights. But there should be no mistaking that our hopes for aworld beyond tribalist revenge and the arbitrary power of rulersdepend on strengthening and advancing the notion of universal humanright. The legitimacy of modern nation-states the legitimacy ofjustice itself rests upon this right. Of course, not all democraticnation-states are just in practice, nor have they necessarily comeinto being in ways consonant with the universal human rights theyassert. The United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa arejust a few of the many examples of democratic nation-states that havecome into existence through violence. The various horrors that havemarked the history of these countries, however, have not preventedthem from offering full participation in the polity to those who hadbeen enslaved, expelled, and/or exterminated as the nation-state cameinto existence. Thus Ben Nighthorse Campbell, an American Indian, sitsin the U.S. Senate, while Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice,descendents of enslaved Africans, run U.S. foreign policy (needless toadd, very cordially to Israel), and may someday be president.None of this denies the racism that blocks the modern democratic statefrom keeping its promise. But there is a big difference between astate that fails to live up to its social contract because of ahistory saturated with racism, and one where the contract itselfgenerates racism, as has been the case for a settler-colonial Israelwhich claims to be both a democracy and an ethnocracy organized by andfor the Jewish people. Under such circumstances, racism is not anhistorical atavism, but an entirely normal, and constantly growing,feature of the political landscape. To have a state created expresslyfor one people constantly eats away and mocks thedemocratic-emancipatory aspects of Zionism. Zionism, in short, isbuilt on an impossibility, and to live in it and be of it is to live alie.In other instances of post settler-colonial states, the democraticpromise, however compromised, confers legitimacy. In the case ofIsrael, the logic of the ethnocratic state rules out an authenticdemocracy and denies legitimacy. All the propaganda about Israel beingthe "only democracy in the Middle East" and so forth, is false at itscore, no matter how many fine institutions are built there, or howmany crumbs are thrown to the Arabs who are allowed to live within itsbounds. This can be shown any number of ways, none more telling thanthe inability of Israel to write a Constitution with a Bill of Rights.As we well know, there are many states in the modern world thatproclaim themselves for a given people and are in many respects moreunpleasant places than Israel, including some of the Islamic states,such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. But none of these assert extravagantclaims for embodying the benefits of democratic modernity as doesIsrael. Thus one expects nothing from Pakistan or Saudi Arabia in theway of democratic right, and gets it; whereas Israel groans under thecontradictions imposed by incorporating features of Western liberaldemocracy within a fundamentally pre-modern, tribalist mission.In Israel, Jewish exceptionalism becomes the catalyst of a terriblesplitting of the moral faculties, and, by extension, of the wholemoral universe that polarizes Zionist thought. For God's chosenpeople, with their hard-earned identity of high-mindedness, bydefinition cannot sink into racist violence. "It can't be us," saysthe Zionist, when in fact it is precisely Zionists who are doing thesethings. The inevitable result becomes a splitting of the psyche thatdrives responsibility for one's acts out of the picture. Subjectivelythis means that the various faculties of conscience, desire, andagency dis-integrate and undergo separate paths of development. As aresult, Zionism experiences no internal dialectic, no possibilities ofcorrection, beneath its facade of exceptionalist virtue. The Covenantbecomes a license giving the right to dominate instead of anobligation to moral development. Zionism therefore cannot grow; it canonly repeat its crimes and degenerate further. Only a people thataspires to be so high can fall so low.We may sum these effects as the presence of a "bad conscience" withinZionism. Here, badness refers to the effects of hatred, which is theprimary affect that grows out of the splitting between the exaltedstandards of divine promise and the imperatives of tribalism andimperialism. A phenomenally thin skin and denial of responsibility arethe inevitable results. The inability to regard Palestinians as fullhuman beings with equivalent human rights pricks the conscience, butthe pain is turned on its head and pours out as hatred against thosewho would remind of betrayal: the Palestinians themselves and thoseothers, especially Jews, who would call attention to Zionism'scontradictions. Unable to tolerate criticism, the bad conscienceimmediately turns denial into projection. "It can't be us," becomes"it must be them," and this only worsens racism, violence, and theseverity of the double standard. Thus the "self-hating Jew" is amirror-image of a Zionism that cannot recognize itself. It is thescreen upon which bad conscience can be projected. It is a guilt thatcannot be transcended to become conscientiousness or real atonement,and which returns as persecutory accusation and renewed aggression.The bad conscience of Zionism cannot distinguish between authenticcriticism and the mirrored delusions of anti-Semitism lying ready-madein the swamps of our civilization and awakened by the currentcrisis. Both are threats, though the progressive critique is moretelling, as it contests the concrete reality of Israel and pointstoward self-transformation by differentiating Jewishness from Zionism;while anti-Semitism regards the Jew abstractly and in a demonic form,as "Jewish money" or "Jewish conspiracies," and misses the realmark. Indeed, Zionism makes instrumental use of anti-Semitism, as agarbage pail into which all opposition can be thrown, and a germinatorof fearfulness around which to rally Jews. This is not to discount themenace posed by anti-Semitism nor the need to struggle vigorouslyagainst it. But the greater need is to develop a genuinely criticalperspective, and not be bullied into confusing critique of Israel withanti-Semitism. One cannot in conscience condemn anti-Semitism byrallying around Israel, when it is Israel that needs to befundamentally changed if the world is to awaken from this nightmare.This is not the place to explore what such change would look like. Butthe guiding principle can be fairly directly stated. By forming Israelas a refuge and homeland for Jews from centuries of persecution, andespecially by making the Faustian bargain with imperialism, those Jewswho opted for Zionism negated their past sufferings, and turned theirweakness into strength. But such strength, grounded in the domination,oppression, and expulsion of others, is worthless. Zionism negatedwhat had been done to the Jews but failed to negate the negationitself, and thereby repeated the past with a different set ofmasks. If one doubts this, look at the set of oppressions forced uponJews by Christendom being forced into ghettos, denied ordinaryrights such as land-holding, kicked around, massacred, expelled, andsubjected to a racist system by the oppressors and ask yourselfwhether the same have not been imposed upon Palestinians by theZionist, with the only distinction worth noting being the terms of theracism?It is never too late to remedy this state, and a sizable minority ofpeople of good will are already moving in this direction, againstgreat odds. But it would be irresponsible to gloss over the grimfinding that the journey is conditioned by the fact that the core ofthe problem lies in Zionism itself, with its assumption that there canbe a democratic state for one particular people. So long as thisnotion is held, poisonous contradictions will continue to spill forthfrom the ancient land variously called Palestine or Israel. And as afrankly non-democratic, or even fascist, Israel can scarcely beimagined as an improvement, we are led to the sober conclusion that abasic rethinking of Jewish exceptionalism must be the ground of anylasting or just peace in the region. The implications are many, andneed to be worked out. But the time has come for the Jewish people toresume their striving toward universality.


Here is Joel Kovel's letter to the Bard administration re his contract nonrenewal:

Joel Kovel has now issued a statement:http://www.joelkovel.org/STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE_Introduction_In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of SocialStudies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointmentoutside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts.The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with halfsalary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, toJune 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy,Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not berenewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as ofthat day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein,Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultationwith members of the Faculty Senate.This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicialand motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations,but by political values, principally stemming from differences betweenmyself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There isof course much more to my years at Bard than this, including anothercontroversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (/The Enemy ofNature/). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict overZionism only too reminiscentof innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israelhave been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. Inthis instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluationprocess which was used to justify my termination from the faculty._A brief chronology_• 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism.In October, my article, "Zionism's Bad Conscience," appeared in/Tikkun/. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President LeonBotstein's office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away.Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, thengratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I hadjust published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his viewswere diametrically opposed to mine.• 2003. In January I published a second article in /Tikkun/,"'Left-Anti-Semitism' and the Special Status of Israel," which arguedfor a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weekslater,I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested,on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, thatperhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The resultof this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, ofthe current half-time contract as "Distinguished Professor."• 2006. I finished a draft of /Overcoming Zionism/. In January, whileI was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted aconcert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he hasdirected since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concertpractice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of theUnited States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose.Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. Iregarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship"between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war inIraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. InDecember, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh)to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended;the rest were students and community people; and the issue was nevertaken up on campus.• 2007. /Overcoming Zionism/ was now on the market, arguing for aOne-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, MartinPeretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the /LosAngeles Times/. Peretz is an official in AIPAC's foreign policythink-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee—though this latter fact wasnot pointed out in the book). In August, /Overcoming Zionism/ wasattacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, whichsucceeded in pressuring the book's United States distributor, theUniversity of Michigan Press, to remove it from circulation. Anextraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U of M) succeededin reversing this frank episode ofbook-burning. I was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with theexception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support fromBard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of aprofessor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why this wasso, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care ofmyself. This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protectits faculty from violation of their rights of free expression—all themore so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as abastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom inits Faculty Handbook as a "right . . . to search for truth andunderstanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic]findings without intimidation."• 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teacha course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, itwas carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, anotherevaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previousevaluations, in 1996 and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was citedby Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go._Irregularities in the Evaluation Process_The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along withProfessors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a memberof the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and thecampus' Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, aschair of the Episcopal–Jewish Relations Committee in the EpiscopalDiocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee ofChristians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity hecampaigns vigorouslyagainst Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions againstthe State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic tothe Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader,Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other sideof the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference inBirmingham, MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I metRev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position. It should alsobe observed thatProfessor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeliaggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program onWABC, "Religion on the Line," (January 11, 2009) arguing from theDoctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticizeIsrael for human rights violations—this despite the fact that largenumbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israelicrimes in Gaza. Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to hisopinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence ofsuch a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in thedecision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Mostdefinitely, Professor Chilton should have recused himself from thisposition. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that thedecision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myselfand the Bard administration, renders the process of my terminationinvalid as an instance of what theCollege's Faculty Handbook calls a procedure "designed to evaluateeach faculty member fairly and in good faith."I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonablenegotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely deniedby Dean Dominy's curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, accordingto her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted thatthere was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a /faitaccompli/. In view of this I considered myself left with no otheroption than the release of this document._On the responsibililty of intellectuals_Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion ofprogressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in2005 by the /Princeton Review /as the second-most progressive collegein the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal'in 'liberal arts.'" But "liberal" thought evidently has its limits;and my work against Zionism has encountered these.A fundamentalprinciple of mine is that the educator must criticize the injusticesof the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict withthe powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do soplays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and stateviolence. In no sphere of political action does this principle applymore vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no countryis this issue more strategically important than in the United States,given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel'sbehavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be thesuppression ofcriticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses aredeeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though notexclusively, in the United States—which culture arises fromsuppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, suchas colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public.Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza,it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States thatgrant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one suchinstitution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel andZionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred andare occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptiveof a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the criticof such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomesmarginalized, and then removed.For further information: www.codz.org; Joel Kovel, "OvercomingImpunity," /The Link/ Jan-March 2009 (www.ameu.org).To write the Bard administration:President Leon Botstein <president@bard.edu.Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou <dpapadimitrou@bard.ed