(Revisionist) Zionists Desiring Arabs

Palestinians as Jabotinskian Ideological Props
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

The Jewish Radical Right, Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy, by Eran Kaplan can be extremely helpful in understanding Neocon goals and mentality because the Neocons of today are simply the American branch of the Jabotinskian (Revisionist) Zionist intelligentsia,

• which is politically dominant in the State of Israel and
• whose thinking influences or dominates the majority of American Zionist Jews including those like Rahm Emanuel, who are not officially Neocons.

In the excerpt below Eran Kaplan discusses various themes

• that appear in the writings of Jabotinskian Zionist leader Abba Achimeir in the 30s,
• that still continue to appear in American Zionist discourse to this day and
• that have even taken over the Republican Party in some sense.

Examples include:

• the persistent attempt to fit Christian Arabs into the Eastern European Ashkenazi historical model,
• the attack on science, and
• the implicit equation (or at least correlation) of socialism with anti-Semitism in attacks on Obama during the waning days of the McCain Presidential Campaign.

In order to undo the damage the Neocon Jabotinskian Zionists have caused the USA, concerned citizens will have to work hard to make sure that the Jabotinskian ideological narrative that suffuses the thinking of Jewish American Zionists like Rahm Emanuel, Martha Minow, and Lawrence Summers is prevented from dominating American political discourse, discussion and debates.

[Note that I have previously discussed Joseph Massad's new book Desiring Arabs in Participating in an Obsolete Discourse and Feb. 11, Harvard: Joseph Massad. The latter blog entry suggests that fully understanding the influence of Western discourse about Arab sexuality on Arab discourse about Arab sexuality requires awareness of Jewish Zionist discourse about (Arab) sexuality and how the latter discourse affects Western and Arab discourse. Even though Achimeir is using Arabs in order to make a statement about European Jewish culture, "Raskolnikov in the Central Jail" belongs for the most part to the probably insufficiently investigated Jewish Zionist discussion of Arab sexuality. Because of the importance of Jewish intellectuals and academics in the West, ideas like those of Achimeir fairly quickly become part of normative Western discourse.]

The Jewish Radical Right, Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy

By Eran Kaplan

(pp. 37-41)

 

Achimeir pegged the beginning of the Jewish decline to the ap­pearance of Ezra, the great reformer, and not, as Spengler would have it, to the emergence of the Jewish ghetto in Christian Europe. Unlike Spengler, Achimeir did not view Judaism as a historical anomaly, a Magian nation trapped in the Faustian world, but rather as a (once) normal nation that experienced a decline as a result of the loss of its national home. The Jewish tragedy was that as a result of the loss of its territorial and political base, Judaism reinvented itself as an international entity: Yavneh, a strictly religious center, overtook Jerusalem -- as both religious center and political capital -- whereas the Talmud, a product of the Diaspora, superseded the Bible, which tells the story of a sovereign nation living on its own land.

 

Achimeir provided what is perhaps the most introspective depic­tion of the Jewish predicament in a short story titled "Raskolnikov in the Central Jail." Achimeir's Raskolnikov is a young prisoner in Jerusalem's central jail, who, like the protagonist of Crime and Pun­ishment, has a tormented soul. But unlike Dostoyevsky's Raskolni­kov, the predicament of Achimeir's is strictly the result of his unique national condition and history, not the consequence of a crime that he has committed.

 

Achimeir described the inmate as a young Christian Arab who has been convicted of murder. He is part of the jail's Arab population, but he is an outsider in this group because of his religion. His name, Jesus-originally a Jewish name, Achimeir points out-further sep­arates the inmate from his fellow Arab prisoners.

 

After his conviction Achimeir's Raskolnikov chooses to wear a red jail outfit, which symbolizes his interests in socialism and Marxism. At the same time he is popular among the jail's Catholic population because he was convicted by Protestant (English) authorities. As a murderer he is admired by the other prisoners, because killers oc­cupy the top of the jail's criminal hierarchy. But at the same time the jail's administrators like him because he is a productive worker in the jail's printing shop (Achimeir claimed that printer is a historically Jewish occupation).

 

Achimeir offered a detailed description of the sexual habits of the jail's male population. He argued that the European prisoners tend to act as both males and females in their sexual relationships. The Eastern prisoners, on the other hand, assume only one role, as either man or woman. According to Achimeir, his Raskolnikov should have been a male in his sexual relations with other inmates because of his great stature among the prisoners. However, the prisoner was once a prostitute who performed the feminine role in his relations with male clients, so in jail he becomes the "female" partner of the most dominant prisoners. Achimeir also described the inmate's manner of dress on Sundays, writing that when his protagonist goes to pray in church, he wears an Arab robe as well as Western pants, emphasizing his dual identity as a man of both East and West.

 

Achimeir published "Raskolnikov in the Central Jail" in August 1935, not long after he himself was released from this facility. The writer had been arrested because of his alleged involvement in the as­sassination of Chaim Arlozoroff and in other illegal activities of Brith ha-Biryonim, and the story reflects Achimeir's experiences in jail. But the story also provides a unique analysis of the plight of Judaism.

 

Achimeir's Raskolnikov is a tormented soul, because he lacks true  identity. He is at once part of the Occident and the Orient. He is dom­inant yet feminine and a Marxist who is a practicing Catholic. Raskol­nikov represents the condition of the Diaspora Jews, even those phys­ically living in Palestine-torn between opposing identities, between their own national needs and their extraterritorial international con­dition, unable to uncover and realize their true nature.

 

According to Achimeir, the schism in the Jewish soul is mani­fested in the two main religious and philosophical movements that Jews founded: Christianity and Marxisrn. (His Raskolnikov prac­tices both.) These two movements advocate universal messages that transcend national boundaries, and, for Jews who had lost their national identity, they offered a framework that promised salvation. This promise, however, was false because universalistic ambitions only suppressed humans' true nature, which for Achimeir could be expressed only through the nation. Thus, like Raskolnikov in Jerusa­lem's central jail, the Jews were torn between their knowledge that they had a unique identity and the universal role that they had as­sumed in the Diaspora.

 

According to Achimeir, the Zionist movement fell into the same trap of oppositions as his Raskolnikov did in its futile attempts to resurrect the Jewish national home. Instead of focusing on reviving the Jewish national urge, the movement attempted to justify its na­tionalist goals by declaring itself part of a universalistic movement, socialism. Revisionist monism was a fight against socialism. But, ac­cording to Achimeir, it was also a fight against self- hatred. When Jews were willing to go to jail for foreign ideals and values, they were acting against themselves, against their national nature. They were wast­ing their historic opportunity to return to their golden age. As Achi­meir put it elsewhere, ''A war against socialism is a war against anti­-Semitism. From this the conclusion is that the war against socialism is not only a war for monism but also against anti-Semitism."

 

In Spengler's cyclical view of human history, all cultures go through an initial phase of growth, which is marked by faith and spirituality. Cultural vitality, according to Spengler, is characterized by national independence and unity and by an unrestrained will to power. A culture's decline, on the other hand, is marked by a pre­occupation with matter and by the rise of sciences that deal with the material world and eliminate the religious and spiritual. While Spengler's scheme is pessimistic, because cultures cannot escape their impending doom, it also leaves room for optimism, because by understanding history, people can understand which factors could create a thriving new culture.

 

Spengler argued that war is part of nature, whereas peace is the result of the preaching of intellectuals. Pacifism is but an illusion, a mark of senility and decay. Whoever adopts pacifism abandons the future. Strong and vital races are not pacifistic; they embrace war, and war and violence are the marks of an emerging culture. Achi­meir wholeheartedly adopted Spengler's stance on this point. In a letter addressed to Hebrew youth, Achimeir wrote: "It seems that Spengler's prophecy about the declining West in light of the degener­ation of the socialist and liberal worldviews saved Europe from the parliamentary rule of chattering politicians, and, more important, national dictatorship saved the people of central Europe from civil war and Marxist utopias." [Achimeir wrote the preceeding statement in September 1934 and is probably referring to the transformation of Germany into a Nazi dictatorship.]

 

The only way for the Hebrew nation to revitalize itself, Achimeir maintained, was by rejecting the dominant ideologies of the West, which preached pacifism and other universal ideals, and by return­ing to the pre-exilic Israelite ethos of the warrior judges who had roamed the ancient land. The Jews should not emulate the declining West but return to their own national values. The West, Achimeir argued, had become a culture of science and rationality and had lost its vitality. Zionism should not follow in this path. It should not give up its national interests in the name of false ideals but instead should seek spiritual unity. True Zionists would have to be true monists.

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