I was perturbed, upon reading Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s review, in the Times Literary Supplement, of six books which address the theme of Zionism, to find a positive reference to Jacqueline Rose in the first sentence.
Rose, as Shalom Lappin pointed out in a perceptive review of her book, The Question of Zion, believes that Zionism is a “collective mental disorder induced by centuries of Jewish suffering…the trauma of persecution in diaspora led to the displacement of rage, shame, and helplessness onto innocent Palestinian victims who had no part in the European abuse to which Israelis have been responding in the course of their history.”
But Wheatcroft is impressed with Rose’s observation that while news from, and debate about, Israel is a daily occurrence, Zionism doesn’t get discussed as much.
Depends where, I would retort. In Iran, for example, Israel is routinely referred to as the “Zionist regime.” Hezbollah blamed “Zionism” for the recent killing of arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh. “Zionism” figures prominently in calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel - a strategy which Jacqueline Rose, among many others, is sympathetic towards. And when US policy in the Middle East is discussed, especially these days, it’s hard to avoid a reference to “Zionist” influence.
So it’s not that people aren’t aware of the word. It’s the meaning that’s distorted. And to give Wheatcroft his due, he does write that, “it sometimes seems that the more strongly people feel, the less they actually know about the story of Zionism.”
Oddly, Rose’s implacable hostility to Zionism isn’t highlighted in the favorable, if brisk, mention which Wheatcroft gives to her latest offering, “The Last Resistance.” Much of his review - which you should read - is taken up with discussion of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the revisionist Zionist leader, who features heavily in two of the other books under review here. His treatment of Jabotinsky is actually rather nuanced - leading me to wonder why he can’t perceive the overwhelming lack of nuance embodied in another book he reviews, A Threat from Within, by the archly anti-Zionist ultraorthodox academic, and Neturei Karta fellow-traveller, Yakov Rabkin.
There’s much that Wheatcroft doesn’t address, whether it’s the history of antisemitism or the tendency of anti-Zionist writers to frame their work within a construct of history which presents the Palestinians, firstly, as only victims, and secondly, as having a special status in terms of being the victims of the victims. He also asserts, as fact, the eminently disputable claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today.” That may be true in western academic circles, but there are millions of unwilling participants in far deadlier conflicts from Iraq and Pakistan to Congo and Sudan who might beg to differ.
Still, Wheatcroft does demonstrate that it’s possible to appreciate Zionism’s heterogenous nature - and given current standards of debate, that’s something to take note of. Joy of joys, in discussing Jimmy Carter’s pitiful Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he even affords us a chuckle: “The book is all of Carter: pious, plodding and platitudinous, its awestruck accounts of meetings with the mighty padded out with what-I-did-in-my-holidays jottings (’all of us experienced the extraordinary buoyancy as we swam in the Dead Sea . . .’).”
Finally, even if Wheatcroft doesn’t reference The Zionist Idea, he might just lead some readers to seek it out.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft work on Zionism borders on the antisemitic. His book The Controversy of Zion decries “the use” of the Holocaust to “justify” Israel’s existence.
In other words Wheatcroft appeals to an historical context when it suits his purpose but some historical events such as the Shoah are verboten.
The writer also has the habit of using of quotes taken from Jews like Jacqueline Rose to attack Zionism rather than speaking in his own voice. This is an old technique used by antisemites since time immemorial.
It is obvious to me from reading his book and articles that Wheatcroft finds Zionism quite distasteful and that he uses the so called “controversy of Zion,” i.e. the notion that not all Jews supported Zionism in order to delegitimize it.
In this particular article he will quote someone like Kurt Weill on Israel in the mid 30’s who found Jewish nationalism similar to German nationalism (this was of course before the Holocaust) but does not tell us that Weill’s parents stayed on in Israel and hence did not have the same view about that country that he did at that time. Nor does he tell us that Weill refused to speak or write in German after the Holocaust with the exception of the letters he wrote to his parents who lived in Israel. In other words he takes quotes out of context in order to show that intellectual Jews too saw Zionism as a kind of Fascist movement.
I also found Wheatcroft’s conclusion that Jabotinsky was more “honest” than Ben-Gurion pretty bizarre. Firstly, while Jabotinsky is not the monster he has been made out to be, it was Ben Gurion who insisted on making Israel the kind of liberal democracy it became giving the same civil rights to all its citizens Arabs as well as Jews. (This is stated in Israel’s founding document.) Wheatcroft of course lives this out too from his tendentious screed on Jabotinsky and Zionism.
I find the fact that this author is being published in respectable magazines very disturbing.
Good comment, Shriber. I may have been overly soft on him!
Hi Ben,
I don’t think you were “too soft on him.”
I am glad that you opened a discussion on the subject. I have been writing to the Boston Globe and other publications pointing out some glaring omissions in his articles on Zionism but so far to no avail. He seems to have set himself up as “an authority on Zionism” and since he is a conservative thinker he is thought to be less biased on the subject than some “wild eyed radical.”
I hope other people will weigh in and hopefully it will come to the attention of editors that Wheatcroft does not have the last word on Zionism.
Thanks for your article, Ben.