Borderline Crimes

Contrary to popular belief, Marx never used the term “false consciousness”. He assumed that what prevented the disadvantaged from revolting was usually the “dull compulsion of economic relations” – the simple need to make a living  (quoted in Scott’s fascinating

Domination and the Arts of Resistance). Ideological manipulation interested Marx more in relation to the privileged – the self-delusions that they need to continue fulfilling their role. I’ve been thinking about this recently in relation to Israel.

In the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx writes about the bourgeois politicians who initiated the French Revolution to ease restrictions on their trading: “unheroic though bourgeois society is, it nevertheless needed heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war, and national wars to bring it into being. And in the austere classical traditions of the Roman Republic the bourgeois gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions, that they needed to conceal from themselves the bourgeois-limited content of their struggles and to keep their passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy. Similarly, at another stage of development a century earlier, Cromwell and the English people had borrowed from the Old Testament the speech, emotions, and illusions for their bourgeois revolution […] the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles”.

 You don’t always need to articulate what your privileges are, what exactly you are afraid of losing. But to convince themselves, to keep their own “passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy,” people need to dramatize. Americans who are afraid of paying more taxes to provide healthcare for the uninsured tell themselves they are fighting Stalin and Hitler (the record, so far, was set by this comparison of the health reform to the Holocaust, mocked brilliantly by Jon Stewart).

For those supporting the policies of the Israeli government, the equivalent is the battle against Islamic anti-Semitism. This self-presentation is much more prevalent than openly right-wing arguments: a friend was telling me that on a popular Israeli dating site, where people are asked to describe their political views (just like on Facebook profiles), almost no one says they are right-wing. Educated middle-class Israelis like to distance themselves from the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, just as they despised Kahane in the 1980s. Lieberman is vulgar, blatant, embarrassing, not what you would want people to remind you of on your next trip to Europe. So are the settlers – among these circles you will find many more people willing to denounce them than open proponents of the Greater Israel. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and his “freeze” are taken at face value, and seen positively – most people don’t read the fine print about the speeding up of construction in the settlements. So why aren’t these people taking an active stance to bring about this Palestinian state, which they say they support? Because, beyond their general wish for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, these people claim to be pessimists.

Round their dinnertables, Israelis talk obsessively about Islamic fundamentalism. Ahamdinejad’s supposed threat to wipe Israel off the map , the latest provocative statement by Nassralah, the sensible attitude of the Swiss who decided to protect themselves against four very threatening minarets  – all these are staples. But you also hear people developing hypothetical tragic scenarios: what are the present torments of the Palestinian refugees compared to what could possibly happen to Jewish Israelis if they were allowed to return and live with them? What is the prejudice that Arabs face in Israel compared to the terrifying possibility that they’ll have too many babies? There is always a very dramatic air to these dystopias: unlike those naive peace activists who keep getting tear-gassed every week in places like Bil’in, these speakers know everything there is to know about Muslims and Arabs. 1950s Existentialist philosophers recognized that Man must face his own mortality; these disillusioned realists understand that Jews will always face Islamic anti-Semitism. Therefore, there is no point in working for peace and justice.

As it was for Marx’s revolutionary bourgeois, this heroic struggle with anti-semitism makes material benefits too mundane to be mentioned: the fact that most Israeli communities are build on land taken from former Palestinian ones, as this new interactive map shows; the appropriation of water from West Bank aquifers not just for settlers, but for the Tel Aviv metropolitan region ;  Jewish-only roads that cut through the West Bank to lessen traffic jams between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem ; the huge security industry and its many beneficiaries – all these are ignored by the self-styled Emile Zolas who obsess about Haniyeh and Ahmadinejad.

This is not to say that no Arabs or Muslims have anti-Jewish sentiments. But as with Ahmadinejad’s fabricated “wiping off the map” comment, the extent of this hatred is wildly exaggerated by people who hardly take the trouble to visit their Arab neighbors in Jaffa/Yafa, certainly not to join any protests in the territories. This self-imposed segregation makes it is easy to transform every MEMRI-distorted headline (including this famous one about Hamas’ Mickey Mouse ) to a clearcut example of Arab public opinion.

The Israeli government represents its most violent policies as authentic embodiments of Judaism. It used an innocent children’s song about a Hanukka dreidel made of cast lead to provide a catchy name for its murderous operation in Gaza (the same song mentions a mother making latkes for her children – how does correspond to dropping phosphorus shells on  UN-run schools?). Combating anti-Jewish sentiments is impossible if people don’t speak up against such horrible distortions of Judaism.

Breaking any self-imposed isolation from Arabs and Muslims is the best cure for privileged pessimism. Joint political activism gives us the hope to imagine a better, more just Israeli-Palestinian future. There’s no time to waste.