PS Not every minority or ethnic group has a state. The state structure is certainly a ploy used by powerful states in a post-colonial world. Israel and Palestine really is no exception to this. But what every other minority did not have was a UN Mandate for a state called Palestine, still unimplemented.

I definitely do not believe that there is a vacuum of anti-Zionist expression free of anti-semitism. In fact, that would immediately make me anti-semitic.

After all, that perspective, properly understood, is simply (or perhaps not so simply) one that seeks to advance coherent, cogent and responsibly clarified grounds for discussion, along with arguments based upon that grounding. Absent that perspective and cogency parties will essentially, to put it in simplified terms, be abandoning better conceived discussions and arguments for discussions that are based upon mutual misconceptions. In attempting to make as much of the discussion as is possible accessible to the mind, in all its multivaried and particularist manifestations, there is no inherent necessity to change one’s positions on various topics. The only truly inherent necessity involved in such a general endeavor is the necessity to make an earnest and responsible attempt at better clarifications, cogency, etc.

I.e. at the base of this is the idea to throw more light, rather than less light, on the multifaceted, multilayered, etc. complexities involved. It’s a challenge, but it’s very much a worthwhile challenge, rightly conceived it’s a necessary challenge, one needing to be responsibly and conscientiously faced. At least that’s how I approach this set of exchanges at Norm’s blog and here, and it’s how I approach the topic in broader terms as well.

There are cautions involved in such an endeavor, as is alluded to directly above, but they are cautions only, they are not inherently stopping points. One of those cautions is that, in attempting to understand “the other” and in approaching them in a manner that is at least intellectually “sympathetic” to their view, there is the risk of being forgetful of one’s own and one’s compatriots subjective, real-world concerns. That is a problem, however, that inheres to virtually any process of abstraction/conceptualization; it’s an issue, a part of the challenge, a part of the task being attempted and one that needs to be consciously born in mind, but it does not inherently represent a contradiction or a terminal point, beyond which it is somehow not safe to venture.

That said, I think I can add the following clarifications of what I’m saying in response to Eamonn’s latest post without violating the role I’m trying to take on:

1) I don’t agree that a “non-anti-semitic anti-Zionism is … entirely absent from the debate” on Israel-Palestine. Each of the types of anti-Zionist positions I represent as something a person might hold without being anti-Semitic is something that I have actually heard from quite a number of people who seem to me clearly not anti-Semitic (and I’m not shy about finding people anti-Semitic). They do tend to be positions held mostly in the academy, where nationalism is widely despised, rather than in the general population. But I think Jewish communities go wrong by simply labelling every professor who opposes Zionism an anti-Semite (as happens here in Chicago all the time: see 3, below), instead of recognizing that in some cases, at least, the professor who holds the view opposes all nationalism, including Arab and Muslim nationalism, and has an at worst naive belief that everyone can and soon will live in wholly liberal or socialist states. One can and should argue with these people, but calling them anti-Semites is not the right ground for that argument.

2) Nevertheless, I do think anti-Semitism plays a major role in explaining why there is widespread criticism of Israel for favoring a particular ethnic/religious group when many other states do the same thing. I don’t think it’s the only factor, but it’s probably the most important one – as I say both in “Cool Hour 3” and in the piece on anti-Semitism referenced therein.

3) Here in the US, at least, the organized Jewish community quite often does try to shut down debate over Israel, and often employs the accusation of anti-Semitism to do so. Twice in the past year, Jewish groups have tried to prevent anti-Israel professors from getting tenure, and just this past Spring, the Jewish Federation here in Chicago, with the help of a local Jewish newspaper, pressured the Jewish museum in town to close a show it deemed anti-Israel. I’m a fervent opponent of the proposed British boycott of Israeli academics, but I’m sorry to say that the assault on free speech on this issue doesn’t come just from the anti-Israel side.

4) My point about the asymmetries between Israelis and Palestinians was not meant to suggest anything about Israeli *responsibility* for Palestinian suffering (I don’t think I said anything even hinting at that). It was just a point about *asymmetry*: about the fact that, even in an attempt to write a balanced, potentially shareable, moral narrative, one can’t always find equal fault on both sides. And the reason for making the point is one I’d imagine Eamonn would like: that I wanted to stress the fact that anti-Semitism plays a far greater role in the opposition to Israel than racism does in support for Israel.